


The Strange Case of Emmet Swan

by SinisterScribe



Series: Strange Cases [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A lot - Freeform, F/M, Genderbend, Regina laughs, Romance Ensues, Ruby is missing out, Rule 63, S2 pocket universe, Swan Queen - Freeform, and she knows it, and so does Regina, because I like the D, genderbent, how terribly sexist, in which wishes are errant, magic apprenticeship, s3 technically AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-06-02 04:56:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 45,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6551923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterScribe/pseuds/SinisterScribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma wakes up one morning to find that something has gone amiss in the night. </p><p>Well...not so much amiss as...it's complicated, okay?</p><p>Anyway, Regina is called in as per usual to make it all better and she's having a GREAT time. Emma has to agree to some serious life changes in order to get Regina onboard with helping and it only gets more complicated from there when the power of wishes and those pesky FEELINGS get involved. </p><p>That, and it turns out that a penis is Emma's sole redeeming feature. How terribly sexist of me, I KNOW.</p><p>SQ fun times with a twist. You knew I wasn't going to just go at it the regular way. </p><p>This IS on hiatus but I'm hoping posting and some feedback might finally drop kick my muse out of sulking so I can get to the important business of finishing this and other fics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, sports fans, this is where it gets exciting!
> 
> This is set at the beginning of S3 but it's actually AU from mid S2. So what that means is that everything is canon up until the S2A finale and then it goes on an AU tangent. That is to say, Cora and Hook never made it to Stoybrooke. Regina continued on her path of redemption with a few stumbles along the way and was putting up with the Charmings if not friendly with them. 
> 
> Enter Greg and Tamara who act pretty much as canon. They capture and torture Regina but when they take Henry, Regina has the wherewithal to fry them with lightning before they can drag him through a portal. So they're out there somewhere but not in Storybrooke. For now. 
> 
> I think that's about it. 
> 
> I have five chapters consecutively written for this and honestly the material for at least three stories worth of this. Seriously, hundreds of pages. I might post it as disjointed stuff because Emmet is a fun guy and I really like him. 
> 
> TO ALL OF YOU THAT HAVE PROBLEMS WITH SQ WITH A DICK:
> 
> I don't care. Whine all you want, I genuinely don't care. I'm having fun.

**Chapter 1 – Game Face**

 

Regina Mills, Evil Queen (former), Mayor of Storybrooke (current) approached the door of Snow’s loft and wondered what the hell was so damn important at half past eight on a Sunday morning.

 _Some_ people had things to do.

Which involved a rare long lie in bed that had been something of a foreign concept to a single mother.

Then again, Regina would far rather have her son back than a couple more hours shut eye of a Sunday morning…which was the only reason she’d answered the damn phone in the first place. She’d thought it was something IMPORTANT.

Not whatever shenanigans the Charming Conglomerate had gotten themselves into this time and found themselves in need of someone with enough moral flexibility to kill the person/creature/indeterminate entity that was bothering them this week.

Regina sipped her quadruple shot, tried valiantly to wake up properly and brace herself for the coming confrontation, and knocked sharply on the door.

It was flung open almost immediately and Regina’s brows rose, her coffee cup halfway to her mouth in search of another slug of caffeine. Snow filled the doorway like she had been lying in wait for Regina’s arrival.

“Thank goodness you’re here!”

Regina’s response was something along the lines of ‘gack!’ when she was bodily hauled into the apartment by Snow’s hand on her arm and propelled into the living area.

“This is Luis Vuitton!” Regina shrugged Snow off sharply and checked she hadn’t spilled any precious coffee. “Now, what is so important that you couldn’t wait until my usual business hours?”

“Business hours?”

Regina froze, nothing but her eyes moving to the source of the unfamiliar voice, and she straightened when confronted with a beautiful stranger.

He would be tall when he stood, about Charming’s height, his hair was long –unusual- and fell in gold and caramel waves down past his shoulders. His eyes were piercing blue, his face sculpted of a strong nose, high sweeping cheekbones and a strong jaw. His mouth, which was tight with tension, was intriguingly full.

He should have looked pretty and foppish with all that hair and those eyes and that mouth, but he didn’t. He looked…interesting.

He sat on the very edge of the couch, his elbows on his knees, his long fingered hands throttling one another and he wore clothes that looked suspiciously like Charming’s but didn’t fit his frame so well. Too tight at the shoulders and too baggy at the waist.

Well, well, well, the morning might not be a total loss. 

Regina arched a brow and sipped from her coffee again. She took her time studying him and then formulated an answer when she realised her predation might be seen as something other than the female appreciation for the male form.

“Curses, hexes and bad juju, available Monday to Friday, nine to five.” She looked sideways at Snow. “Am I in danger of introductions at any point?”

“You mean, you don’t know? You can’t, I don’t know, sense anything?”

“Like a disturbance in the Force?” Regina frowned.

“Exactly!” Snow leaped on it.

Regina’s frown deepened.

“Shall I go out and come back in again?” Regina jerked her thumb at the door. It was too damn early for this. “What’s going on? Who is this? Why should I care? Where is Henry?”

“He’s upstairs talking to David.” The man answered and Regina sipped her coffee, savouring the sound of his voice along with. “He’s a little freaked out by all this.”

“All this being…?” Regina was beginning to feel the tension coil low in her gut. _What_ were they not telling her? What was going on?

“Well…” Snow started brightly and then tapered off when she didn’t know how to spin whatever ‘this’ was positively. She flung her arm helplessly at the stranger.

“That’s Emma.”

Regina, who had been trying to divine why she should give a fuck about any of this from the grounds in the dregs of her coffee cup, went completely still mid-swirl. Her lips pursed a little, her head tilted, then she looked up at…Emma.

“Hi.” He said weakly, waving one hand. “It’s…really me.”

Regina was still for another long moment and then she crossed the room in three long strides, clapping her empty cup against Snow’s chest and gripping the apparent Emma (Emma the _man_ ) by that long hair of his.

Which handily matched the style Emma had been in possession of just the day before.

Regina yanked his face up, her eyes boring into his, and she frowned fiercely. Gathering her magic, she gave a very pointed shove right into his.

And he _did_ have magic. Not just magic but Magic. The kind of magic that Emma had been swimming in.

Exactly that kind, it turned out, because those signatures, that light and frothing feel that was Swan’s magic through and through, was identical.

If this was a trick, if this man was a shape shifter or an imposter, Regina couldn’t tell.

For all intents and purposes, this man…was Emma Swan.

Regina released him from her hold and took two steps back. Her hands dropped to her sides and her fingers flexed once whilst she digested that. She glanced over at Snow to find the other woman clutching the coffee cup and chewing enthusiastically on her lip.

Regina realised only then that they wanted her to fix it.

“Excuse me.”

Regina spun on her heel, strode back to the front door of the apartment, opened it, slipped out into the hallway and clipped it quietly closed on her heels.

“What does that mean?” Back in the apartment, Emma –the man- waved at the door.

“I don’t know.” Snow stared at the closed door as if she’d never seen it before.

Had Regina just _left?_ Just left them there to deal with it by themselves? When they had no idea what had happened or what to do or…? She couldn’t have just LEFT!

…but she hadn’t come back in either.

“Should I go after her?” Emma surged to his feet and took a step towards the door before nearly tripping over himself. “God damn it!”

He was taller now. By about eight or nine inches and all of it appeared to be more leg than he knew what to do with. His arms seemed gargantuan too, he kept barging into things with shoulders that were broader than he was used too and god damn it if his own voice didn’t startle him every damn time.

“Just…sit down.” Snow herded him back towards the couch and he reluctantly sat.

It seemed to make Snow feel better when Emma sat and Emma was pretty certain that he was only remaining calm because _somebody_ had to. He’d kind of been hoping to lose it a little once Regina had arrived to take control of the situation, but _she’d_ just fucked off and left them in the lurch!

“Is my mom here yet?”

Emma twisted around to see Henry crouched halfway down the stairs, refusing to even look at Emma, and staring intently at Snow.

“She just stepped out for a minute.” Snow nodded.

“Why?” Henry snuck another step further down and Charming’s legs came into view.

Emma got the very distinct impression that Henry was there under protestation.

It had been a hell of a morning for all concerned but Henry seemed to have taken the worst of it.

Emma was still nursing the goose egg on the back of his head from where Henry had walloped him with a lamp of all things.

To be fair, the kid had woken up to a strange man looming over him and had reacted accordingly. Namely by snatching up the nearest blunt object and trying to brain the intruder.

It had been some hasty explaining on Emma’s part to get across that it was her…who was now a him and would Charming PLEASE stop trying to skewer him with the damn sword.

Emma had then spent an hour and a half proving that it was him/her/whatever, really it was, and that this had somehow happened magically.

She had gone to sleep as a five five woman and woken up as a six three man.

Not one of her better mornings.

Henry’s reaction, whilst understandable, still stung Emma.

He had retreated from Emma like the man was caustic, hovered uncertainly behind Charming and then demanded that they’d call Regina because SHE would know what to do and she would fix it.

Whilst their best bet, it still hurt to have Henry turn to Regina at the first sign of trouble.

Emma might be Henry’s birth…parent but Regina would always be the one that had raised him. She would always be the one that could fix things.

“I’m not sure, Henry.” Snow glanced at Emma and Henry pointedly did not follow her gaze.

Henry was freaking out, thank you very much, and would continue to do so until someone who could take charge and fix things arrived. He was more than a little concerned that said grown up had not only turned up but seemed to have disappeared again within five minutes.

“Do you want to try and find her?” Snow asked uncertainly and Henry was down the stairs before she could blink.

“Yeah.” He didn’t even bother with his coat or shoes, just dashed to the door of the apartment and disappeared outside.

“Henry!” Snow waved at Emma to stay where he was and gave chase, snatching up a coat on the way by the hooks.

She slithered to a halt in the hallway when she found that Regina had gone all of ten feet before apparently stopping to think about her life.

She stood with her back to them, one hand braced against the wall, her head bowed as if in thought.

“Mom?” Henry cautiously approached, confused as to why she was out in the hallway when she could be inside the apartment helping. “Mom, are you okay?”

Regina made a choked sound and Henry hurried forward, gripping her by the arm and spinning her to face them.

The move tore Regina’s hand from her mouth and she let loose a _howl_ of laughter.

“She’s a man!” Regina stomped her foot and laughed loudly. Her voice got higher with every word until it choked off. “She’s actually, properly, completely shifted!”

Snow blinked, staggered back a step, and stared at the sorceress who appeared to have completely lost all sense of decorum or control.

Regina clutched at her ribs, laughing hysterically, tears streaming down her face and slithered down the wall to sit on the floor.

“Just learning her magic and…this…this is what she does!” Regina howled and twisted back and forth, completely in the throes of her laughter.

“Mom?” Henry looked wildly at Snow and she could only shrug. She’d never seen Regina genuinely laugh either.

Regina’s heels drummed against the floor, she toppled onto her side and continued to laugh. She laughed so hard that she couldn’t inhale anymore and her shoulders shook in breathless silent cackling. Her hand covered her mouth as if to try and force air in and her other fist pounded the floor and she STILL laughed.

“Mom? Mom!” Henry dropped to his knees, beginning to think this was some bizarre kind of fit, and gripped her by the shoulders. “Mom, stop it, you’re scaring me!”

That appeared to get through to her and Regina managed to suck in a whooping breath and cough another chuckle before she regained rigid control.

Tears still streamed down her face, but she swiped them away. A grin still pulled at her mouth but she no longer guffawed and focussed on Henry.

“Sorry, honey.” Regina’s mouth twitched repeatedly when the laughter tried to take over. “I’m okay.”

“This is serious.” Henry knelt beside her and frowned. “Emma turned into a guy.”

Regina clapped her hand over her mouth and forced the laugh violently back down her throat. She managed a nod.

“Oh, yes. Very serious.”

“You gotta help.”

“A-a-absolutely.” Regina nodded, her jaw trembling with the need to laugh again but you didn’t become a sorceress of world renown without developing a will of iron.

“Seriously? You’ll help?” Henry’s brows rose when she caved so easily. He’d expected a lot more wheedling on his part.

“Henry, you couldn’t DRAG me away.” Regina grinned, her nose scrunched when she had to fight down another guffaw, but then she waved him away so she could stand.

“And you gotta stop laughing.” Henry admonished her.

“Of course.” Regina nodded and set about neatening herself up a little. She’d mussed her hair with rolling around on the floor and rumpled her jacket from all the rib clutching. She coughed suspiciously, nearly gagging on another laugh, but mustered it down under control again.

“I mean it, no enjoying it.” Henry folded his arms over his chest and was treated to a snort of amusement from Regina who folded in half and had to catch herself on her knees.

She stood like that for a long moment, her shoulders shaking silently and, when she finally straightened, she was under control again. If a little red in the face.

“Too late.” She shook her head in a parody of sadness and Henry scowled.

Which had Regina choke on another laugh but she swallowed that one back down too.

“You’re going to be okay?” Snow looked askance at Regina. She couldn’t really say that she found this situation funny. She had been rather fond of her daughter being a daughter.

“I will…rise to the occasion.” Regina smoothed her coat needlessly and nodded slowly. “May I have some more coffee?”

“Uh, sure.” Snow watched Regina for another moment and then headed back into the apartment.

“Mom, _are_ you gonna be okay?” Henry looked up at her and Regina nodded firmly this time.

“Yes. I’ll be fine. The situation just caught me by surprise. That’s all.” Regina nodded again, squared her shoulders, and walked back into the apartment.

She made it as far as the other side of the doormat before she caught sight of Emma again and completely lost it.

“Nope!” Regina spun on her heel and dived back out of the apartment, nearly bowling Henry over, slamming the door behind her.

Henry growled.

“Mom…mom…” He planted his hands on his hips. “Mom, get up and stop laughing! This is super serious!”

It was a further five minutes of such verbal lambasting before Regina managed to regain her feet and straighten both her clothes and her face once more.

“Alright. I’m good, I’m fine. I just…I didn’t have my game face on.” Regina nodded and waved at her face. “I just need to get that on and…and we’re good to go.”

Her lips twitched.

Henry scowled at her.

“Alright, I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

“Game face on?”

“Game face on.”

Henry watched her for a long narrow eyed moment and then grunted in the back of his throat. Opening the door, he waved Regina inside.

Regina walked carefully into the apartment NOT looking at Emma. She stepped with the careful precision of someone testing a minefield and managed to get to the breakfast bar without incident. She accepted her cup of coffee from Snow and took a drink.

Slowly, carefully, she turned to face the room at large.

She nodded to Charming, summoned another controlled smile for Henry and –when she could put it off no longer- looked over at Emma.

Regina spun away and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“MOM!” Henry yelled at her but Regina’s eyes were tightly closed and her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

“Mom, stop it! You’re supposed to fix this! You’re supposed to fix stuff like this now ‘cause you’re good.”

“I’m sorry, Henry!” Regina gasped and folded over herself again, blindly putting the coffee cup on the nearest flat surface. “I’m so sorry. Oh, God, I’m really not!”

It was all Regina could do to hold herself up and still breathe after a fashion whilst Henry hissed furiously at her.

“You said you had your game face on!”

“I did!” Regina stomped her foot repeatedly like that would help but it just _didn’t._ “I swear, I did.”

“It doesn’t look like it!”

“I know.” Regina forced herself to take a deep breath. “I know.”

 She had laughed so much it hurt and she tried to focus on the pain and not how hysterically funny she found the whole situation. She slowly straightened and looked about herself.

Spotting yesterday’s newspaper, Regina scooped it up and rolled it into a tight tube. She slapped it against her palm and nodded. Turning to Henry, she held it out to him.

“Hit me with this.”

“I’m not going to hit you!”

“Just when I start to laugh again. Hit me with this.”

“You’re my mom! I can’t hit you!”

“Sure you can, just haul back and swing.” Regina nodded to him. “It’s alright, you’re not big enough to really hurt me yet. Just smack me on the arm with it when I start to laugh.”

“Can’t you just…not laugh?”

Regina looked at him for a long moment and her mouth began to quirk upwards again. She forced it to straighten and then shook her head vehemently.

“I really don’t think so.”

Henry looked down at the newspaper and sighed, his shoulders slumping.

“I really gotta?”

“You’d never seriously hurt me, Henry. Not physically. I know that. I trust you. Just…keep me serious for a while.”

“I never thought you’d ask me THAT.” Henry muttered, picking at the furled pages.

“Me neither.” Regina straightened to her full height. “Ready?”

“Ready.” He sounded less than enthusiastic.

“Game face on?”

“Game face on.” He grumbled.

“Let’s do this.” Regina nodded to herself and spun to face the room at large again.

Wow, NONE of them looked as happy about this as she was but –then- she supposed if _she’d_ woken up with certain parts of her anatomy turned inside out then she’d be a little pissy about it too.

Clamping down on that thought before it triggered another giggle fit, Regina cleared her throat and removed her coat. Folding it neatly over the back of the couch, Regina skirted the seat to fold herself neatly down into the centre of it.

She hooked one knee over the other and laced her fingers together over it. She inhaled a deep breath, smiled when Henry dropped down to sit beside her and rolled her hand on her wrist in the direction of the Charmings.

“So…start at the beginning.”

“Well…”

Emma started but Regina’s shoulders hunched and she gave a drawn out snort of amusement. One that cut off into a laughing yelp when Henry slapped the newspaper down on her thigh.

Hard.

“Continue.” Regina’s voice was strangled, but she was at least upright again and Emma huffed an irritated sigh through his nose.

“I woke up like this.”

Regina nodded and waited. Her brows rose after a moment.

“And?”

“And what? I woke up like this!” Emma threw his arms wide and Regina tilted her head.

 Her mouth quivered but she muscled it under control when Henry meaningfully hefted the sports section. She cleared her throat.

“Could you feel anything?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know, something dangling maybe? OW!” Regina looked wildly at Henry. “I wasn’t laughing!”

“You looked like you were going to start.”

Regina rubbed at her arm but couldn’t deny that and turned back to Emma. She shrugged a shoulder.

“Alright, perhaps a crudely worded question but still a valid one. Is the change complete?”

Emma glanced at Henry and Regina huffed a sigh out through her nose.

“It’s not like he’s unfamiliar with the concept. Are you fully male?” Regina took refuge in her annoyance. At least that she could get a handle on.

“Yes.” Emma flushed and Regina scrunched her nose when she thought it was adorable. Somehow Emma as a man was so much more likeable than the alternative.

“Truly, how…? I’m not asking that.” Regina shook her head and picked something else. “Any tingling in your limbs? Did you feel hot? Could you smell fudge?”

“Fudge?” Charming growled. “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Magic burns energy. Energy in the human body is made of glucose. Glucose is sugar. Burnt sugar smells like…?” Regina bit out at him and he fell silent.

“The room did smell kind of…sweet.” Emma nodded slowly. “I thought it was just that potpourri stuff that mom likes.”

“Temperature?”

“I think I’m kind of hot now.”

“Modest too.” Regina snapped her hand around the newspaper before it could make contact with her shoulder and firmly pushed it back down onto Henry’s lap. “Pins and needles?”

“I was sore.” Emma shrugged his broad shoulders and Regina watched the movement with interest. “Like after a long run or a workout.”

Regina nodded.

“Thirsty?”

“I drank about a gallon of juice when they let me.” Emma waved at his parents.

“Hungry too?”

“Still hungry. I had, like, two breakfasts.”

“Do you feel aggressive? Angry?”

“I was pretty pissy earlier when dad was waving a sword at me but I’m over it now.” Emma glanced at Charming who had the grace to look sheepish.

Regina watched that with slightly narrowed eyes.

“What about coordination, do you have the same mobility you did last night?”

“What’s mobility?” Henry murmured.

“Range of movement, sweetheart. I want to know if the change is a healthy one.” Regina supplied.  

“I had to hop the couch a couple of times.” Emma waved at Charming again to indicate the dancing with swords they’d done earlier. “I don’t feel less flexible or anything.”

Regina nodded and mulled that over.

“Alright,” Regina surged to her feet and crossed to stand over Emma, “stand up.”

Emma gathered himself and carefully stood.

Regina leaned a half step back when he towered over her, even in her heels, but recovered herself quickly. She cleared her throat and reached down, taking Emma’s hand in hers. She pinched the back of it. Hard.

“Ow!”

“Hush.” Regina ignored his yelp and gripped him by the ears bringing his face down level with hers.

 Pressing hard into the hollow of his cheeks with her thumbs, Regina forced Emma’s mouth open and looked inside. She changed her mind and then pulled Emma’s eyes wide and rounded off with yanking a hair out and studying it.

“Ow! Will you stop?” Emma rubbed at the part of his scalp where Regina had so cruelly just yanked some hair loose.

“Take off your shirt.” Regina ignored him and started to unbutton the borrowed shirt that Emma was wearing.

“Hey! Stop that!” Emma slapped her hands away.

“Do you have your cell on you? In your pocket?” Regina gripped Emma by the belt loop of his jeans and made as if to reach into the hip pocket.

“Back off!” Emma’s large hand manacled around Regina’s wrist and forcibly put her hand away from him. He shoved her back a step but kept hold of her wrist so as not to topple her over. He was aware he was stronger now. 

“How is this helping, Regina?” Charming demanded.

“Emma’s eyes are a different colour, an icy blue now rather than the more watered down teal of his female self. His hair is darker, more like your own caramel shade but he is not more inherently aggressive nor territorial.”

“So?” Emma growled.

“ _So,_ ” Regina enunciated, “eye colour, hair colour, those are dictated by DNA. This change goes right down the base of your genetic code. You went from an XX chromosome to XY. It is a complete change but not yet chemical. Emma’s system is not yet flooded with testosterone which would have had him react entirely differently to me trying to strip him.”

Both Charming and Snow looked at her wide eyed and with brows raised.

Regina blinked and then coughed a laugh.

Henry slapped her with the newspaper.

“Ow! Ow.” Regina rubbed at her hip and sidled away from Henry. “I meant that he would have shoved me away. Typical male aggression response.”

“I’m not exactly your typical male.” Emma folded his arms over his chest and rolled his eyes skyward when Regina began to giggle again. “Can you stop finding this so damn funny?!”

“Ouch!” Regina hopped away from Henry, holding her thigh and swallowed her chuckles.

“So, Emma’s DNA has changed, what does that mean?” Snow demanded and Regina, when she straightened up from rubbing her leg, suddenly looked very serious.

She huffed out a slow sigh and shrugged a shoulder.

“It means I can’t change him back.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2 – Harassment**

 

Regina stood in the middle of the storm of yelling and bawling with her arms folded over her chest and a bored expression on her face.

Honestly, they’d been at it for about seven and a half minutes now and Regina had given up trying to defend herself and had decided to just let them all tantrum it out.

Charming was threatening her with being turned into sandwich meat if she didn’t change her mind about helping them right this instant, Emma was ranting something about –of all things- learning to go to the bathroom standing upright and Snow appeared to be having some sort of mild psychotic break about never being the mother of the bride.

All in all, Regina had enjoyed a better afternoon with Greg and his car battery.

_“QUUUIIIIEEEEEEET!”_

All of the Charmings fumbled into silence and looked with surprise at Henry. He stood on the coffee table, skinny chest heaving, and looking more than a little harassed.

“What the heck is wrong with you?!” He demanded of his moth…erm, Emma and his grandparents. “Mom didn’t say she _wouldn’t_ turn Emma back, she said she COULDN’T.”

Henry glared at them all and Regina calmly reached out with two fingers and directed Charming’s sword point away from her face. She brightened into a smile when Henry finally turned to her.

“Mom, could you maybe tell us a little more about why you _can’t_ do anything?”

“He’s a man.” Regina jerked a thumb at Emma. “Wholly and completely. Had it been flesh and bone, no problem, I could have deconstructed that spell and reversed it but this is a _true_ change. There is nothing I can do.”

“Why should we believe that?” Charming demanded and Regina glared at him narrow eyed.

“You called me.” She reminded him. “What possible reason could I have for lying?”

“I don’t know! It’s not like you haven’t found all of this greatly amusing.”

“Well, that’s hardly my fault. The whole bunch of you are usually hip deep in SOME kind of trouble and I so rarely get to gloat because I’m usually getting the blame and…why am I not getting the blame this time?” Regina frowned at the realisation. She looked between Snow, Charming and Emma. “One of you gets a _hangnail_ and I’m put on trial but THIS doesn’t warrant even a token accusation or three? You know, for old time’s sake?”

“Why would you make me bigger and stronger than you? More of a threat.” Emma shrugged. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Regina narrowed her eyes and turned to face Emma entirely. She shook her head slowly.

“That’s not it. That’s far too logical for you. Evidence has always come second to your instincts so spill.” Regina planted her hands on her hips when Emma’s eyes skated away from hers. “Well?”

“I…I might have…wished for this. God, will you _stop_ LAUGHING?!”

“Ow!” Regina hopped away from Henry and mustered her chuckles under control. She circled to the other side of Emma and kept him between her and Henry. She was going to have to disarm him soon. “What makes you think that?”

“Well, last night, Dad and I were out on patrol and we had to get into it with a bunch of drunks outside the _Rabbit Hole_ and I got the crap kicked out of me and Dad walked away without a scratch.” Emma lifted his hand and scrubbed it through his hair. “The last thing I remember thinking before I went to sleep was…this job would be easier if I was bigger and stronger, like David.”

Emma waved helplessly at his father and David looked a strange mixture of proud and guilty.

“It would also be easier if you accepted your magic and learned to use it like the rest of us weak females.” Regina drawled and hunched her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “Or, you know, learn to use that hand-cannon that you have strapped to your hip every second of the day. Is it any wonder you suffered from penis envy with such a genitalia extension on you at all times?”

“Regina!” Snow sputtered and Regina waved her into silence when something else occurred to her.

“You’re not bruised. You said you were beaten and bloodied but there isn’t a mark on you.”

“Well, yeah, I suppose.” Emma examined his hands and arms. “I guess I didn’t notice with all the yelling.”

“Understandable.” Regina allowed and sank into thought for a long moment.

“So,” Emma swung his arms and huffed a sigh, “what do we do now?”

Regina stilled when she realised everyone was looking at her intently.

“Oh, so I’m worth listening to again?” Regina laid a hand against her chest and looked down when Henry took her other hand.

“Mom, please?”

“Fine.” Regina looked up at Emma. “You’re…wishing this on yourself is convenient but by no means the only explanation. As curses go, it seems a little bizarre, why make you bigger and stronger indeed, but we shouldn’t rule anything out. We can do some tests. See if this was done to you rather than by you.”

“Thanks, Regina.” Emma let out a grateful sigh. “Where to first? Your vault?”

“Nope.” Regina grinned. “Granny’s.”

“Say what?” Emma’s face fell and Regina’s grin widened if at all possible.

“Swan,” Regina crossed the room to pick up her coat, “I’m starving, I don’t trust your parents to cook for me and if you think –for one second- that I’m not going to milk this for everything it’s worth, you are sorely mistaken.”

“Mo-ooom!” Henry whined but Regina just grinned.

“Get your coat, honey. There’s some chocolate chip pancakes out there with your name on them.” Regina belted her coat tightly and began herding Emma towards the front door. “Shall I introduce you as Emmet or Emile? I can’t really take you seriously as ‘Emma’ and ‘Swan’ still seems hopelessly effeminate.”

“I’m not going to Granny’s!” Emma braced himself in the doorway and halted himself against Regina’s insistent shoving.

“Oh, don’t be like that, if they put up with me, they’ll still serve you.” Regina reached around him and swung the door open.

“People will see me!”

“Quite the idea, dear.” Regina gave one hard shove with her shoulder and propelled Emma out into the corridor. “Just think of all the women you’ll pick up. I can practically hear Miss Lucas panting from here.”

“Regina. STOP!” Emma spun on his heel and loomed over her, glaring down at her. “I am NOT going to Granny’s to be put on display for your petty amusement.”

“Petty?” The light left Regina’s gleeful smile and it became altogether more ferocious. “You ruined my _life_ , MISTER Swan. You stripped me of everything I held dear, humiliated me and paraded me in front of the masses as some pathetic cautionary tale, holding my own son hostage against me to get me to toe the party line. Everything has a price, Emmet, I suggest you consider paying mine or take your chances with the Dark One or the faeries.”

“You can’t be serious. I thought you had changed.”

“I have changed.” Regina shrugged a shoulder. “Though I have not forgotten nor have I forgiven. I am also NOT your pet sorceress to trot out whenever you get yourself into some mess that is not worth my time.”

“You really think this isn’t worth your time?” Emmet waved at himself.

“It’s not your gender I find distasteful, Emmet, it’s what’s INSIDE that I cannot stand.” Regina smiled sweetly. “I might be a homicidal maniac, but I’m still a better mother than you ever were.”

“Henry disagreed with that.” Emmet reminded her sharply.

“At the time, certainly, I was a mess, but now? Tell me again, who wanted to call me in to help? Who said that I could fix this?”

“Are you actually GOING to do any fixing, or just gloat?”

“I was planning on doing both, women can multitask as you should remember, though I’m in no hurry. As soon as I’ve fulfilled my usefulness to you, you’ll go back to ignoring me and restrict my visitation rights. I plan on spending some quality time with my son before then.”

“So can you fix me or can’t you?”

“I can probably diagnose you.” Regina smirked. “Though the shoe is now on the other foot, Mister Swan, you’re dancing to _my_ tune now. It’s time I had some fun and –for once- it’s going to be at your expense.”

Emmet opened his mouth to unleash the torrent of anger and fear that he’d been holding in check all morning but it died to a croak when Henry joined them in the corridor.

“Are we going to Granny’s or what?”

“Of course we are, honey.” Regina turned and lifted her arm, suddenly all smiles as Henry ducked under it and kept her between him and Emmet.

 He was still wary of this man that had been his mother twelve hours ago.

“Emmet was just complaining about his lack of shoes.” Regina continued with a wicked smile and flicked her fingers at Emmet’s feet.

A pair of boots plumed into existence over his large feet and Emmet growled when he staggered at the sudden addition of yet another inch to his height.

“Emmet?” Henry looked up at the man.

“Suits him more than Emma, don’t you think?” Regina squeezed his shoulders.

“I guess…” Henry looked Emmet up and down. “It’s not going to be…permanent…is it?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t think so.” Regina shook her head and steered Henry past Emmet, sending a wicked smirk his way. “And –if magic fails- there’s always…surgery.”

“Surgery?!” Emmet spun and yelled at her but Regina just grinned, showing all her teeth, and followed Henry down the stairs.

Emmet, resisting the strong urge to cup himself, followed them.

 

**_Granny’s…_ **

 

 Granny could feel something was up.

Her nose had been twitching all morning. She could scent magic in the air. She felt like hackles she no longer had were rising and falling with no reason as to why. Granny industriously polished glasses and mulled it over.

Maybe she should call Charming and Emma. Just to give them a heads up.

The Queen seemed to have been on her best behaviour in recent weeks, since saving the town from the diamond (even if that had technically been her fault) but Gold hadn’t been making the same effort to turn over a new leaf and…and something _was_ up.

Every hair on Granny’s body stood up on end when the door swung upon with a jaunty jingle from the bell and the most terrifying sight of all strode into the diner.

The Evil Queen… _grinning._

“Good morning, Missus Lucas.” Regina smiled at Granny brightly. “We’re here for the biggest stack of pancakes you can bring us without needing a forklift.”

“We…?” Granny looked between Regina and, she recognised Henry of course, but the man was a stranger to her.

“Oh, this is Emmet.” Regina grabbed the man by the arm and dragged him closer. “He’s having breakfast with us. So…three stacks of pancakes. He’s worked up an appetite.”

The young man, Emmet, frowned at Regina but she just smiled sweetly up at him. Her tongue ran over her teeth and then she gave him a little shove towards a booth.

“Take a seat, dear, I’m paying.”

Emmet shot Regina a look that Granny couldn’t read and Henry looked between them and sighed.

“Come on, Emmet.” Henry led him towards the booth.

Regina watched them go, swung her arms once and then did a little two step towards the bar to prop her elbows on it and talk to Granny.

“So, I’ll start with my usual coffee, Emmet will have the largest orange juice you can muster and Henry will have his hot chocolate with all the trimmings.” Regina scooped up a menu and pursed her lips, perusing the pancake options. “As for the pancakes…”

“Alright, cut the crap.” Granny slapped the towel she had been glass polishing with down onto the bar. “What are you doing bringing your boytoy in here to show off in front of Henry? You think any of us are going to be impressed?”

Regina went completely still, her eyes rose and her mouth…twitched.

Granny actually flinched back a step when Regina threw back her head and laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

It was a little disconcerting to realise that Regina actually had a nice and somewhat infectious laugh. Granny found her mouth lifting in an answering smile before she got a handle on it. It occurred to her that she had assumed that Regina would cackle manically but…Granny realised then that the Queen never really laughed at all.

 Regina only stopped her fit of hysteria when Henry walked up to her and swatted her on the arm with his shoe hard enough to nearly knock her over.

“Oh, ow, thank you.” Regina rubbed at her arm and then wiped the tears from her eyes. She cleared her throat and picked up the menu again. “Henry will have chocolate chip pancakes and bring an extra large stack of apple and caramel ones for Emmet and I.” Regina bit her lip to keep from laughing again. “We’ll share.”

Henry heaved a sigh when Regina stifled more giggles and turned around to grip him by the shoulders and steer him back towards the booth Emmet was trying to sit comfortably in.

Seriously though, there was stuff where there had never been stuff before. The angle of the dangle was difficult to manage without hands on intervention. Maybe this was why so many guys held onto their crotches all the time.

“You recovered?” Emmet grumbled at Regina when she slid into the booth opposite him.

“Yes. Henry helped.” Regina was still grinning and shrugged out of her coat.

“This can’t be that funny.” Emmet grumbled.

“Wouldn’t you laugh if our situations were reversed?” Regina laced her fingers together on top of the table and folded one leg over the other.

Emmet stiffened when the toe of her killer heels slid up over his calf under the table.

Regina shifted herself, moving her foot, but gave no other reaction.

“No. I’d try and help.” Emmet growled and glared out the window.

“Yeah, mom, Emm…et’s a good guy.”

“Hah! Literally.”

Henry reached up and flicked Regina’s ear with his finger before she could succumb to her amusement again. She grimaced and rubbed at her ear but made no complaint about it.

“So, are we going to eat breakfast, humiliate me a little and then go to the vault?” Emmet tried to distract himself with a plan of action.

“No.” Regina shook her head and smiled when Granny arrived with their drinks. She sipped from her coffee and savoured the taste, speaking only when Granny left them alone again. “We’re going to eat breakfast, humiliate you _a lot_ and then we can go to the vault.”

“Can I come?” Henry looked between them.

“No.”

His face fell when both of his…parents answered simultaneously.

“Why not?”

“Because the vault is very dangerous, I know that you’ll touch things even though I’ve warned you not to, I’ll be making sure that Emmet doesn’t get himself into trouble there and some of the tests that I’ll have to do are better not done in front of children.”

“Uh…why?” Emmet looked alarmed and rightly so.

Regina was not going to make this pleasant for him.

At all.

“Henry has always been a visual learner, I have no desire for him to memorise the pictograms and symbolism required of demon summoning.” Regina swirled her coffee and spoke blandly.

“Say what?!” Emmet sat up and leaned over the table. “You want to summon what?”

“Calm your Christian _nonsense_ , Swan.” Regina clipped at him. “Demon does not mean what you think it does. I have no idea what has happened to you but I do know of an entity that can probably tell us. It is a spirit of air and intellect. He’ll tell us what we need to know.”

“He?”

“Yes. He.”

“What’s his name?”

“Do you know nothing, Emmet Swan?” Regina arched a brow at him. “I’m not giving you a demon’s _name_. Especially not where Henry might hear it.”

“I wouldn’t summon a demon.” Henry defended himself.

“Yeah, uh-huh, sure.” Regina nursed her coffee and looked down at him. “You wouldn’t steal credit cards either, I bet.”

Henry looked down at his hot chocolate and prodded the cream. Regina sighed and softened a little.

“I know you, Henry. You will have the best intentions and want to do the right thing and…will get you and me and everyone else running after you to keep you safe in Deep Trouble. I just want to keep you away from temptation. That’s all.”

“I just want to help.”

“Well, you have been helping.” Regina lifted her arm and slung it around his shoulders. “I mean, just think, if you hadn’t been there to hit me every so often I never would have been able to look Emmet in the eye never mind hold a conversation with him.”

“What happens if you start laughing in the vault?”

“Nice try, kiddo.” Emmet snorted. “Your mom’s going to be far too busy opening gateways to hell to worry about me in a plaid shirt. Hey, Granny.”

Granny stood over the table, having heard the tail end of that and frowned down at them all.

“Pancakes?” Regina straightened happily in her seat and Granny nodded, a frown still prominent in her face.

“Sure. Pancakes.” She set them in front of her guests and looked between Regina and her new toy. “Enjoy.”

“Oh, I am.” Regina beamed at Granny and not even Henry elbowing her in the ribs dimmed it.

Emmet heaved a sigh when Granny looked at him and then really _looked_ at him. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply, her eyes widened and she canted forward onto the table catching herself on her hands.

“Emma?!”

“Nnnggh.” Emmet scrunched his face up.

“Oh,” Regina spoke quietly from behind her coffee cup, “it’s Emmet now.”

“What…?” Granny looked wildly between Regina and Emm…et and then at Henry. “What?!”

Henry heaved a sigh and Emmet tried to just disappear into the vinyl of the bench seat. Turns out that’s not so easy when you’re over six feet tall and built with it.

“Emma’s kind of got magic and she made a stupid wish last night to be bigger and stronger and when she woke up this morning she was a he.” Henry waved at Emmet as if this had been done deliberately to put a crimp in his day.

“And we don’t suspect…?” Granny looked carefully at Regina.

“But, Missus Lucas,” Regina spoke with studied innocence, “why on earth would I make one of my opponents bigger and stronger than I?”

Granny narrowed her eyes and looked back at Emmet.

“It’s all true.” He shifted uncomfortably in his seat (seriously though, where was he supposed to _put_ it all?). “I think I did this to myself. My magic’s not exactly…well trained. Regina is –supposedly- helping.”

“Really?” Granny drew out the word and looked over at the queen.

Regina sipped her coffee, her tongue sliding over her lower lip to savour the taste and she looked up at Granny from under hooded lashes.

“There is absolutely nowhere else I’d rather be than the front row of this live stage show.”

Granny looked between Regina, Emmet and Henry again and stilled when something seemed to occur to her.

“Riiiight…well, enjoy your breakfasts.” Granny straightened suddenly, turned and bustled her way off to the kitchen.

She disappeared through the saloon style doors leading into the kitchen proper and Regina lifted her hand off the table, three fingers held up. She tucked them into her fist one by one in a measured countdown before…

Emmet flinched when the sound of Ruby and Granny’s laughter echoed throughout the diner.

Emmet, his face crimson, sank down as low as he could into his chair. He stared sightlessly at the pancakes in front of him and tried to ignore Henry repeatedly slapping at Regina with the menu to try and get her to stop laughing.

 

**_The Vault…_ **

 

“This place creeps me out.” Emmet warily followed Regina through the twisting corridors of her underground vault.

His head was on a swivel, not putting it past anything to leap out and go for him from the all concealing shadows. With his arms full, he’d have little chance of defending himself.

Regina had made a ‘quick stop’ by the store on her way here and had picked up a bunch of stuff that Emmet couldn’t really see the use of at all. A hoola hoop (apparently it was a useful skill to learn), candles, brightly coloured fat kids’ chalks, string and a whole HEAP of Oreos.

Emmet was to carry it all as he was a man now and ‘just because he was new at it, didn’t mean he couldn’t be a gentleman’.

Still, Emmet wasn’t unaware that Regina was his best hope at getting out of this mess quickly and efficiently with a relatively light cost. The Dark One, well, that didn’t really bear thinking about and the faeries…Emmet was under the distinct impression that they might just be worse.

Regina’s price at least appeared to be only Emmet’s humiliation for her own twisted amusement.  

“Surprise, surprise.” Regina drawled and came to apparently the door she had been looking for. She lifted her hand, fingers spread, and passed it slowly in front of the door that had no handle. It swung soundlessly inward and Regina stalked inside without missing a beat.

Emmet followed at a more cautious pace.

“What is this place?”

“My lab.” Regina unbuttoned her coat and hung it on a nearby hook. She pulled down an apron and tied it on.

“A lab? I thought you were a witch.”

“Sorceress.” Regina corrected mildly. “Witches can manipulate magic through potions and talismans. A sorceress can summon the elements and manipulate them with nothing more than her willpower. Had you ever bothered to learn anything, you might know that you could have been a sorceress.”

“Is it too late for that?” Emmet carefully set his brown paper bag down at his feet and shifted uneasily. If he had to make a run for the door, he didn’t want to be held down by anything.

“You’d better hope not. It could be the only way you can change back.” Regina grinned and waved at a nearby table. “Put the equipment we picked up there.”

“So, do I still have magic?”

“Oh, yes. You’re quite steeped in it but having it and using it are two very different things. If this is going to go the way I think it’s going to go, you’re going to have to learn how to change _consciously._ Which is highly advanced magic.”

“Can you do it?” Emmet made sure he wasn’t standing on any of the creepy writing on the floor.

“Of course.” Regina turned and seemed amused at Emmet’s discomfort.  

“I didn’t know that. I’ve never seen you pull that trick.”

“That is quite the idea.”

“Oh.” Emmet frowned. “You mean…you’ve done it? Who did you impersonate?”

Regina snorted a derisive sound that didn’t hold much humour at all and shook her head.

“Impersonating someone known is incredibly difficult. To do it effectively, you have to either know them as well as they know themselves or drink a measure of their blood.”

“Ew.” Emmet wrinkled his nose.

“Exactly. No. It is much easier to take the form of an animal that no one would blink twice at and simply…lurk.” Regina turned away and moved deeper into the lab.

It was carefully lain out, as neat as Emmet would expect from Regina’s obsessive compulsive personality, and meticulously organised. There were several different work benches, hundreds of bottles, beakers and test tubes, what appeared to be Bunsen burners which meant gas was wired down here and cabinet upon cabinet filled with jars, bottles and bunches of dried out, gloopy or viscous things that Emmet really didn’t want to ponder too closely.

Emmet followed after Regina, not wanting to be left unattended. Despite Regina’s thoughts about him, he had absolutely ZERO desire to touch anything in here. If at all possible, he’d have avoided the floor, which was inlain with symbols, circles and geometric shapes of copper and silver.

“So, is there anything you can’t turn into?”

“An idiot. So…anyone from your family.”

Emmet  huffed out an irritated breath through his nose.

“Unicorn? Dragon? Faerie?”

“Yes, yes and I’d sooner peel my eyeballs.”

“What’s your beef with them anyway?”

“All that arm flapping when they waft around on a cloud of their own self-righteousness. What is that _about_? It can’t be terribly aerodynamic.” Regina answered in that tone that Emmet was fast coming to realise meant that he was being told the truth, but definitely not all of it.

 Whatever Regina’s reasons for despising the fey, she wasn’t sharing them with Emmet.

Which he supposed was fair. It wasn’t like they were friends at all. Tolerance was probably the best that Emmet could hope for from Regina within this lifetime and that was fine with him. He wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams to become her best bud either. He figured so long as they were useful to one another and Regina had to be civil to him and his in order to be near Henry…he could probably count on her to be on his side.

Probably.

“So…what’s first?” Emmet wanted this over and done with in a big way.

Being down here gave him the creeps. He was _incredibly_ aware that this was her turf and he wouldn’t put it past Regina to shuffle some corridors around on him and keep him trapped down here if she was of a mind to.

The thing that grated most, he supposed, that he was completely beholden to her…the shoe really WAS on the other foot.

If this is how Regina had felt since Emmet had taken Henry from her…no wonder she was crazy.

Emmet frowned when that thought occurred to him and forced himself to tune back into the scheduled program when he found Regina watching him intently.

“What?”

“You were thinking.”

“None of your business.” Emmet snapped and she arched a brow at him and cleared her throat.

“I didn’t ask _what_ you were thinking, I doubt it would be anything ground-breaking, I simply noticed that you were. It’s not something I’ve ever seen you do before.” Regina lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Up until now, I wasn’t even certain that you could.”

Emmet glared at her and felt his fists clench when she seemed –at best- indifferent to it entirely.

“You needn’t be so defensive.” Regina reminded him archly and turned away from him to start pulling ingredients from one of the glass fronted cabinets.

“Pots and kettles.” Emmet growled at her back and Regina didn’t even turn when she next spoke.

“When I defend myself, there is a reason for it.”

“That is NOT what our history tells me.” Emmet folded his arms over his chest.

“Then perhaps you should take a closer look.” Regina got all her bottles and jars in a row and then moved on to gathering up test tubes and beakers.

“My second day here, you threw me in jail, THEN you threatened me with fruit of all things. How is that defensive and not just psychotic?”

“You came into my home and decided you were going to steal my son.” Regina spun, clapping her hand down onto the marble workbench hard enough to make Emmet think she had cracked it. “Now that you’re oh-so attached to him, what would you do in my place?”

Emmet’s jaw clenched but he found he didn’t have it in him to lie to her. Not convincingly anyway.

“You know, for the Saviour, you have an alarming lack of empathy.” Regina clipped at him and turned away.

“ _I_ have a lack of empathy?!” Emmet gripped her by the shoulders and spun her around. “You roofied an entire WORLD! For decades!”

“The difference being, that I have never claimed that my ends justified my means and I have always known what I was doing was wrong. Your family can hardly make the same claim and –had I the freedom to do so- I’d whip you all for giving such a trait to Henry.”

Emmet stared down at Regina and she jerked her shoulder from his hold and turned back to her chemicals and…stuff.

“Now, I suggest you sit down over there and remove your shirt.”

“This again?”

“You can leave it on if you wish, but it will be ruined.” Regina shrugged a shoulder like she didn’t care either way and Emmet realised that was quite probably true. She didn’t seem to care about anyone other than Henry at all.

Except…except with the diamond.

She’d been ready to kill herself to give them all a chance to escape.

She had insisted afterwards that she had been doing it only for Henry. That she hadn’t wanted him to be alone but –had that truly been the case- she could have teleported him and herself to the town border and dragged him over it.

She could have left them all there to die and she…hadn’t.

Afterwards, she had picked herself up, accepted the hug from Henry and then left the mine.

Emma, at the time, had been left with the distinct impression that Regina had been…disappointed.

That she had survived.

Emmet turned away from her and walked over to the stool she had pointed to. He unbuttoned the shirt he had borrowed from his father (seriously though, plaid was not his thing, if this couldn’t be fixed today, he was headed to the store) and shrugged it from his shoulders. He pulled the tee shirt he wore off as well and frowned down at the alien body he found underneath.

If he had done this to himself, wanting to be bigger and stronger, he had succeeded and then some.

Emmet was two inches taller than David. Broader on the shoulders and narrower on the hips. His body freaking _rippled_ with muscle. Not grotesque and bulging like a body builder but –Emmet lifted an arm and tensed- lean and serrated. Like some kind of wild animal.

He could feel it. The power, the strength, simmering under his skin with every breath. Tensing his arm further, he watched the veins roping over the muscles stand in sharp relief and then relaxed, becoming merely sculpted once more at rest.

And he was hairy.

Not like a gorilla or anything, but there was definitely hair where there shouldn’t be. He could feel stubble rasping over his jaw, tufts of hair under his arms and more of it dusting over his arms and legs. It spread over his chest and then arrowed down over the cobbled muscles of his stomach to disappear beneath the waistband of his borrowed jeans.

As a woman who had shaved and waxed regularly it was…disconcerting.

“When you’re quite finished admiring yourself. “

Emmet spun on his heel, his broad shoulders throwing him off and nearly toppling him entirely.

Regina caught him with a hand against his chest and –with a simple shove- punted him neatly onto the stool behind him.

Emmet gripped it to keep from simply tumbling over the back of it and looked the tiny woman up and down.

“Stronger than you look, half pint.”

Regina frowned at him and Emmet grinned.

“I’m nearly a foot taller than you now. You’re freaking tiny.”

“I said I would help you become female again.” Regina approached him with the bowl of aniseed smelling stuff. “I did not say a female of which _species_.”

“I would make an adorable bunny.” Emmet pretended to mull it over.

“And then a wonderful hat.” Regina smirked, dipping her fingers into the bowl and lifting them towards Emmet’s face. “Now, hold still. If you make me screw this up, the demon may eat you.”

Emmet’s eyes widened and he jerked back out of her reach.

Regina huffed a breath out through her nose.

“What did I just say?”

“Eat me?”

“Yes, he’s going to have to get very close to you in order to read what has been done to you. These symbols will be another layer of protection which should keep him from harming you.”

“Should?”

“They _will._ ” Regina’s voice held a hint of a growl. “If you ever shut up long enough for me to paint them on.”

Emmet huffed out a slow sigh and then nodded, gripping the stool on either side and holding himself still.

“Finally, some sense.” Regina lifted her leg and kneed Emmet’s apart.

He blinked at that but Regina seemed to ignore his reaction, stepping closer to him so they were nearly chest to chest. She lifted her dripping fingers and –with her lips pressed together in concentration- began to paint.

It was…odd.

The only time Regina had ever touched Emma was if her life depended on it or if she was about to cause serious harm to her. Vice versa from Emma to Regina.

This touch was different.

Regina’s slick fingers traced over Emmet’s forehead carefully, whisper soft. She was so close that Emmet could feel the heat of her breath on his neck. She didn’t appear to notice his regard so he let himself study her unrestricted for once.

The first thing he noticed was that she had to be hot.

Not just warm, like normal human temperature, but distinctly hotter than that. He could feel heat belting from her like a furnace. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but it made him very aware of her.

She also smelled pretty damn good.

Of apples and caramel and coffee.

He realised that the caramel smell must be the magic. She had said that it smelled like burnt sugar and that caramel smell seemed incredibly similar to the stench that had filled his head when he had woken up as a man that morning.

“Alright, you may breathe again, I’m finished with your face.” Regina rocked back on her heels and Emmet huffed out a slow breath. Relaxing a little.

Regina appeared to wait a moment and Emmet raised his brows.

“You need to relax. If you’re tense when I paint the symbols on, they could skew and become useless or even harmful.”

“I am relaxed.”

“Your arms, Emmet, your chest. _Relax._ ”

“Regina, I’m relaxed. This is tense. See?” Emmet bunched the muscles in his arms, shoulders, chest and stomach.

Regina’s brows rose.

“Oh.” She murmured.

“Better?” Emmet let himself loosen up again and she nodded.

“Fine.” Regina covered her fingers in more gunk and began to paint more symbols over the length and breadth of Emmet’s torso.

She worked quickly and efficiently with obvious skill. She had done this before. Knew the symbols by heart. Her fingers didn’t tremble with nerves, she didn’t hesitate. She was…good at this.

“You’re really clever, aren’t you?”

“Hmm?” Regina lifted one of Emmet’s arms and began to paint a long and curling line down his flank.

“All this…magic stuff. I bet it was a lot to learn.”

“Hmm.” Regina was adding spots and dashes over the serrated muscles of Emmet’s ribs.

“What are we talking…PhD level?”

“Probably.” Regina blew over the absinthe paint and Emmet worked not to squirm. The hot/cold sensation was extremely ticklish. “At least one.”

“At least one?” Emmet distracted himself with carrying the conversation. “Really?”

“I have been learning for over thirty years now. Just because I couldn’t summon the elements during the time of the curse didn’t mean that I stopped thinking on how to do so. You saw for yourself, when the fey came for me again to strip me of my powers, it did not work. Magic is not something you simply _give up_. Especially if you happen to have as many enemies as I do.”

“I keep forgetting that you’re older. Like, _a lot_ older.”

“Inherited your father’s charm, I see.” Regina noted mildly and went back to painting symbols lower and lower over the cobbled muscles of Emmet’s stomach.

“You know what I mean.” Emmet growled a little. “Do you have to be so…?”

“Evil? Manipulative? Intelligent? Attractive?”

“…much of a pain in the ass?”

“Yes.” Regina answered without hesitation. “Take off your pants.”

“Whut?” Emmet stared at her.

“Deaf as well as stupid?”

“I _heard_ you. I just don’t see why I have to.” Emmet gritted.

“The same reason I had you remove your shirt. I could paint the symbols over the material, but it will simply eat through them. Then you’d have to get back to your parents’ apartment without everyone seeing you in your mangled trousers.” Regina smirked. “It’s entirely up to you of course.”

“This stuff is caustic?!”

“Only to inanimate objects. Your skin is living, you’ll be fine. Your pants less so.”

“You could have mentioned the whole naked thing before we started this, you know.” Emmet stood up, forcing her to back up a step, and began to unbuckle his belt.

“And give you longer to complain about it? Besides, you won’t be naked. You can keep your shorts on.”

Emmet grunted and kicked off his boots, shucking his jeans next. He folded them up and put them on top of his shirt and tee shirt.

Regina watched the move with that consuming way of hers that reminded Emmet of a hungry tiger and then her eyes slid back to his.

“What?” He demanded.

“I just did not expect you to be neat.”

“When you’ve got next to nothing, you tend to cherish it…even if it’s just a pair of pants that fit.” Emmet looked away from Regina when her eyes never wavered from his.

“I understand.” Regina stepped forward again and then lowered herself to her knees.

Emmet frowned down at the top of her head and worked down his flinch when she started to draw down the side of his thigh.

“What would you know about having nothing?” He grumbled. “You were a freaking queen.”

“That is the common consensus, isn’t it?” Regina didn’t look up at him, resting the bowl on the floor and bracing her other hand against his knee, using her fingernail to add intricate dashes to the symbol she was working on.

Emmet worked not to squirm at both the feel of her wet fingers sliding over his thigh and the huff of her breathing against his hip.

“Trying to get me to feel sorry for you?” Emmet tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling. Hell, there were more circles and shapes inlaid there too.

“Never.” Regina started on the other leg and Emmet frowned.

She was so _calm_.

He glared down at her.

“Do I have something in my hair?” Regina didn’t look up from the attention she was paying to his feet. Daubing little signs and dots on each of his toes.

“I don’t get you.”

“Join the club.” Regina lifted the bowl and stood, finally done with him.

She circled her finger and it took Emmet a moment to turn his back to her. He gathered up his long hair when he realised she was to do his back next.

“Seriously though. Try and have a civil conversation with you before today and all I get is snapping and growling. Now, I’m being downright rude and _nothing_. Not even a half-hearted snarl.” Emmet would have shrugged but he knew he _would_ get growling if he moved.

“And what is different about today?”

Emmet huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes. Of course she wasn’t going to just give him an answer.

“I’m a guy.”

“You mean to say you truly believe that your sole redeeming feature is a penis?”

“Regina!”

“You were the one who pointed out that was the only difference.” Regina clunked the bowl back down onto the bench and moved around behind him. “You can think of nothing else?”

“Well, I mean, you’ve been laughing at me all morning.” Emmet pulled his hair down over his shoulder and chest to keep it away from the drying symbols on his back. “You just never found me funny before now?”

“That could be it.” Regina’s tone didn’t exactly ring with truth.

“Well, it’s either that or- -WHAT are you doing?!”

Regina stilled in the act of unzipping her skirt. She looked at him for a long moment and then frowned a little.

“Is that a trick question?”

“Why are you getting naked?!” Emmet would have felt embarrassed about the squeak his voice turned into had he been concerned with being macho at all.

“Equality of the sexes?” Regina nimbly stepped out of her skirt despite her five inch killer heels and folded it over the pile of her shirt and blazer on the bench beside Emmet’s clothes.

“Seriously, Regina, what is going on?”

“We’re going to summon a demon.” Regina planted her hands on her naked waist and Emmet tried to look anywhere other than the woman standing in her underwear in front of him.

“Why do YOU have to be naked? It’s not like you’re putting the gunk on too.”

“Emmet, it’s nothing you don’t have yourself…well, up until twelve hours ago anyway.” Regina waved it away. “Why are you getting squeamish over a pair of breasts and some expensive lingerie?”

“Because…I am. Okay?”

“Very well.” Regina shrugged her shoulder and picked up the grocery bag, thrusting it into his arms. “Come along.”

“Where are we going now?”

“The summoning room.” Regina spoke as if she were explaining to a particularly dim child.

“You have a separate room for summoning the denizens of hell?” Emmet followed after her, his bare feet padding over cold stone.

“You would rather I did it in the kitchen? Or your bedroom?”

“I’d rather you didn’t at all.” Emmet grumbled, watching Regina prowl down the corridor in front of him.

She was completely shameless. She didn’t seem to care about her lack of clothes at all.

Though it _was_ very nice underwear.

Regina stalked the labyrinth of hallways down in the catacombs of her vault seemingly at random but finally arrived at a door that had a distinctly more forbidding air to it than most of the others.

She lifted her thumb to her mouth and bit it hard enough to make her wince.

Blood beaded over the pad of her finger and she smeared it over the knotted wood of the door.

It swung silently inward and Regina disappeared into the gloom beyond.

Emmet sucked in a deep breath and clutched tighter at the bag of groceries in his hands.

Twin pinpoints of purple light appeared in the dark shadows of the summoning room and Emmet realised they were Regina’s pupils.

That was by the far the creepiest thing he had ever seen her do.

“Well? Do you want to find out what happened to you or not?”

Emmet sucked in a deep breath and nodded once.

Reminding himself that he already had balls and had manned up the day previous, he stepped over the threshold of the doorway and disappeared into the dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO! A couple of people picked an actor to play Emmet and -sorry to disappoint y'all- but the role has already been cast. 
> 
> Emmet Swan is played by none other than Michael Fassbender as he appeared (mostly) in 300 as the character Stelios. I will admit that Tom Hardy was a close contender (because who doesn't enjoy those shoulders of his) but Michael won out because he can pull off long hair and Tom Hardy -whilst I do adore him- does not. 
> 
> Feel free to mentally cast whoever you like but I thought I would put it out there that Fassbender was who I was thinking of when I wrote Emmet for the first time.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all!
> 
> Back with another chapter. The feedback for this story has been great, guys. I'm really happy you're all enjoying it. 
> 
> Now for some magical hoodoo and angst. Because that's what Regina does best.

**Chapter 3 – Spelling It Out**

 

“You’re sure that we have to do this?”

Emmet stood carefully within the circle Regina had drawn for him with the chalk she had bought earlier.

“The circles? Yes. They’ll stop him from touching you.” Regina was crouched drawing another circle.

On the ceiling.

She was crouched on the ceiling.

“No, I meant the demon thing. Surely there’s got to be a couple of steps between unexplained hoodoo and consulting the _Encyclopaedia Demonica._ ”

Regina chuckled but didn’t break down into hysterical laughter as she had before. Maybe being in her underwear had a sobering effect.

“My contact is reliable. He will tell us at least what kind of spell affects you. Once I know that, I can tell which encyclopaedia I should be consulting.”

“So…he’s Google? With horns and a tail?”

“You’re becoming Christian again. Stop it. It might be catching.” Regina straightened up to her full height so that she stood, upside down, at eye level with him. “I told you, demon is not what you think it is. Magic is not what you think it is and being a man probably isn’t what you think it is either.”

Regina appeared to lift her feet off the ceiling and flip, or the room flipped around her, and then her feet clattered down onto the stone floor without a hitch. She squinted up at the circle on the ceiling and then down at the one around Emmet’s feet and nodded once.

“Good. Don’t move.”

“Ever?”

“From within the circle.” Regina drawled at him like he was a moron. “Have you never even watched an episode of _Supernatural?_ ”

“No! I kind of lost interest in that kind of junk when my life seemed to have turned into a spin-off show!” 

“Calm yourself.” Regina growled at him. “You’ve already proven that your magic is out of control, I don’t need your heightened emotions to set you off again.”

“Then stop pissing me off!”

“Glad to see the gonads are kicking in. Enjoying our little testosterone tantrum, are we?” Regina bit at him and Emmet clapped his mouth closed.

His chest heaved and he shook his head sharply. This was ridiculous. His heart was pounding and his blood was on fire and all he wanted to do was bite her. Emmet clenched his fists and forced his breathing to regulate. She was right. If his magic went haywire again, who knew what he’d end up as next?

At least being a man came with the bonus of still having thumbs and a mouth that could master human speech.

“All the more reason not to bug me.” He spoke in a forced and even tone.

“I do it quite without trying.” Regina smirked at him and then turned away to the grocery bag.

She rummaged out all of the boxes of Oreos and piled them into a little pyramid. She propped up candles around them and lit them with little sparks of magic and then she stood, prowling over to stand beside Emmet. She stepped neatly into the hoola-hoop that she had left lying on the floor and then rolled her shoulders and stretched her neck. Her fingers flexed and she lifted her hands.

“Don’t you get a circle?”

Regina’s hands clenched and her eyes closed. She let out a slow breath that was almost a growl.

“I have one.”

“It’s a hoola-hoop.”

“I am aware.”

“It’s a kids toy.”

“Yes. It will also suit my purposes.” Regina’s hands dropped to her sides and she turned to look at him. “Anything else?”

“Won’t it melt?”

“Mel- -! Why would it melt?!”

“I dunno! Fire and brimstone and stuff.” Emmet waved at her helplessly. “It’s not like you’re rocking the fire retardant safety gear.”

“I shall endeavour not to immolate myself before I can turn you back.” Regina rolled her eyes and lifted her hands again.

“Can that happen? Is this really that dangerous?” Emmet moved towards her but her arched eyebrow reminded him of his chalk line prison. He huffed out a growl and stilled. “Don’t risk yourself over me. There has to be another way if this is dangerous.”

“Everything is dangerous.” Regina dropped her hands again but this time more slowly. She seemed…confused. “And this is the only way to find out what happened to you without searching manually through every book I own…of which there are _many_.”

“How many?”

“Library of Congress many.” Regina enunciated slowly. “I told you, magic is not what you think it is. It is not some hand waving _deus ex machina_ that saves or ruins the day in a puff of smoke and plume of glitter. It is a living, breathing, force of the universe as tame and as human as gravity or magnetism and it must be harnessed to our will through sheer bloody mindedness. Every time we use it, we stake our very souls on it and risk _it_ using _us_. There is no magic without danger. There is no reward without risk. Did you truly think this would be _easy?_ ”

“I didn’t think you might get hurt helping me.” Emmet wanted to step closer to her again but stopped himself before his toes crossed the chalk line. “Don’t do this unless you’ve got your own little chalk circly thingy. There’s no reason for you not to have a lifebelt.”

“I have my own ‘little chalk circly thingy’.” Regina tapped the pointed toe of her shoe onto the hoola-hoop. Her voice was cold and clipped. “Besides, you’re not worth dying for. Not even to spend a few extra days with Henry before you cut me off again. Don’t flatter yourself.”

Emmet’s jaw clenched and she lifted her hands again before glancing over at him.

“Well? May I begin?”

“Knock yourself out.”

“You’d better hope that doesn’t happen.” Regina smirked and magic engulfed her hands.

Emmet sucked in a breath at the hot feeling of it blasting against his skin even across the several feet that separated them and the protective barrier of the circles she had drawn for him. Wow, that was a lot of juice. He took a half step back but was careful not to fall over the line she had drawn around him. She had made it abundantly clear that Bad Things would happen should he do so.

  Regina snapped her fingers with the sound of a shotgun going off, startling another flinch from Emmet, and every candle in the room flared to life with a roar of flame and a burning stench of fatty tallow.

There were _hundreds_ of them. They covered every flat surface beyond the pale block of light that had fallen in through the open doorway of the summoning room. Their burning orange light illuminated a steel ring embedded into the floor that…well, it surrounded both Regina and Emmet in their own respective circles.

Regina had mentioned something about circles keeping them safe and the demon out. If that was the case, why were they in the demon’s circle?

Emmet’s rising panic was not at all helped by the only way out slamming closed with another thunderous bang that gusted over the candle flames causing them to gutter and flicker, threatening them with the dark.

“Oh, Scratch.” Regina thumped her heel twice against the floor with an echoing clatter. Her voice was throaty and altogether too come-hither for Emmet’s tastes. He had never heard that kind of voice from her. “I need you.”

The candles flickered and flared. Growing blindingly bright and then guttering way down to almost nothing. Emmet felt the darkness rise and let out a slow breath. It had been a long time since he’d been afraid of the dark, but you never really forgot when it wrapped around you once more.

Regina and Emmet were surrounded by a wreath of tiny barely there candle flames. Just nebulous pinpricks of orange at the tip of each candle until…a pair of them moved.

There was a sense of slow undulation. Of something shifting in the dark that hadn’t been there just a second before.

Or had it always been there?

Had it been there all along and Emmet just hadn’t known? Was he _standing_ on it? Was it all around him?

“Scratch, if you don’t stop with the sideshow, I’m going to put my clothes back on.”

“You’re naked?”

The lights flared, the room suddenly bright and blinding, and Emmet muscled down a powerful flinch when the demon was _there._

“If you didn’t feel the need to wave your sense of the dramatic about every time I asked a simple question, maybe you’d have noticed sooner.” Regina smirked though it was completely different from the mean one she had levelled at Emmet. Her eyes tracked down over the demon and the smirk grew into a smile of appreciation. “Nice duds.”

“One of my favoured forms.” Scratch, the demon, spread his arms and stepped back, bowing deeply. “There are appearances to uphold, after all.”

Emmet was trying very hard not to stare.

Holy. Shit.

Unholy shit.

That was the freaking Devil.

‘Scratch’ was over seven feet tall at the tip of his huge handlebar black horns. He had black hair that was perfectly styled with brill cream in a teddy boy kind of way and a trimmed beard graced his strong jaw. His skin was a shimmering crimson stretched over lean and rippling muscles, his legs were that of a goat with long silky black fur that shone in the candelight. His cloven hooves were sharp and appeared to be made of some kind of dark steel as they drew small sparks from the stone floor with every one of his nimble steps. He had a long tail of the same crimson of his skin with another plume of dark fur at the swishing tip.

His eyes were completely black save for the deepest glint of gold to them that _may_ have been a pupil or just a trick of the light.     

   He was also completely naked and _definitely_ male.

And pleased to see them.

Emmet looked up at the ceiling and tried to think of what the correct response was to coming face to face with the Devil.

“Ah, it wouldn’t do for everyone to know that I’m your favourite?”

“A dubious honour.” Scratch grinned, showing off sharp teeth and loomed closer to Regina.

“Don’t worry. You’re mine too.” Regina scooted the hoola-hoop across the floor with her toe and stepped even closer than he had until something shimmered against his horns.

 The magic engulfing her within the circle. It would seem the hoola-hoop really did work.

“It has been an age since you summoned me last.” Scratch’s head lowered, his horns grating sparks off the invisible field of magic that surrounded her. “Your proclamations of favouritism ring something hollow.”

“Long story.” Regina reached up and dragged her fingernails over her side of the circle’s magic. Sparks flew from the rake of her claws and Emmet saw goosebumps rise over the red flesh of Scratch’s chest.

“I am endless. I have the time.”

“Though I do not. There is a small matter I wish narrowed down, endless one. Your help?”

“With?”

“Well, I have all these Oreos that need eating….” Regina waved her hand at the little pyramid of blue packets and Scratch swivelled with a sudden intensity to eyeball the offering with glittering interest.

The tip of his tail twitched once and he waved his hand, the Oreos disappearing in a shimmer of black smoke. He turned back to Regina and looked her up and down.

“Thank you.” He decided after a moment. “What a lovely…gift.”

Regina’s jaw clenched a little, just barely, but Emmet recognised the sign of annoyance for what it was. Judging by Scratch’s smirk, he did too.

How well did he know Regina?

“You’re welcome,” Regina recovered herself, “a small apology for being parted from you for so long.”

“Forgiven.” Scratch decided after a moment and tilted his head, his horns scraping across the barrier that separated them again. “Your problem?”

“Him.” Regina pointed to Emmet.

Scratch’s tail twitched and those glints of gold in his black eyes darted to regard Emmet.

Emmet sucked in a breath when the gaze hit him like a physical thing and Scratch lifted his head from grating against Regina’s protective spell and turned his full regard on Emmet. His tail twitched once more and he began to stalk towards the human male.

“Is this him? Your latest consort?” Scratch grunted in the back of his throat, prowling around Emmet’s chalk circle and being very careful not to touch it at all.

 It was made of much sterner stuff than the one that surrounded her. She had daubed protective symbols all over the little man too. It surprised him not at all that she would protect someone she loved most fiercely…but there was none of that between them. There was no artifice to her when she snorted in denial.

“In his dreams.” Regina folded her arms over her quite lovely chest and arched a brow. “And even then, he wouldn’t know what to do with me.”

“Hey!” Emmet glared at her and changed his mind when Scratch suddenly loomed between them.

The demon looked him dead in the eye for the longest of moments and then he slunk away.

It was so odd to watch him move. Those strange goat shaped legs with the rippling fur that did look like it would feel nice to touch, moving with a precision and dexterity that no mere animal could ever hope to match. His long tail slunk back and forth and his pointed ears twitched towards Regina when she next spoke.

“So? What is your price?”

“What is your task?” Scratch whirled, stalking around her little plastic circle, his tail coiling nearly completely around it and his shadow falling over her.

“I would like you to read whichever spell has befallen him. He’s been changed by it and I would like to know who cast the spell on him.”

“So look yourself.”

“And miss out on this darling chat?” Regina looked offended. “Dearest Scratch, you wound me.”

Scratch cocked his head and arched an eyebrow.

“Fine. I can’t. I only occupy five dimensions and you must be in the early thousands by now. Take a look and tell me what you see that could have changed him. It is a true change and that takes considerable will and power to implement. I would very much like to know who –other than myself- is in possession of such power and will.”

Scratch’s ear twitched and –slowly- he smiled.

“This is a paltry task for one such as I and not beyond one such as you. You may ask your question though you should know the answer may not be to your liking.”

“I know that I can do it myself, I just want to cut out the time component. Which you do so marvellously.”

“Very well, flattering thing, you may have the answer to your question.” Scratch’s fangs glinted when he smiled. “Though you shall not pay my price.”

“You’re not getting my name.” Regina jerked her head towards Emmet. “Or his.”

“Not even one?”

“Not one syllable.”

“Hmm,” Scratch reached up and scratched his claws through his black beard, “pity.”

“Never felt it.” Regina smirked and Scratch gave a low chuckle that vibrated throughout the room.

“I imagine not, wicked female.” Scratch loomed ever closer to her, his horns grating against the barrier again. “Drop the spell. Let me touch you.”

Regina blinked and she tilted back from him but that was the only indication she gave of her surprise.

“I can’t and you know it.” Regina’s smirk returned as quickly as it had fallen. “That breaks the rules. You’d be obliged to kill me. If I was _lucky_.”

“Not true. I would be obliged to…punish…you.” Scratch ground his horns back and forth over the barrier. “And we both know that punishment can be a delight in and of itself. You would weep, little thing. You would sob and cry and _beg_. You would beg for more.”

Regina’s tongue traced over her teeth and her eyes became hooded. Her gaze wandered lower and lower over her demon and she sucked her lower lip between her teeth, humming deep in her throat.

“Doooon’t even think about it.” Emmet blurted and was treated to flaming looks from both demon and summoner.

He glared right back.

“This is stupid. I’ve seen this movie. The horny one dies first.” Emmet jabbed a finger at Regina. “I know it’s been a while but this thing will. Eat. You. He’s the Devil! You don’t make deals with the Devil! Everyone _knows_ that!”

“If I do not, it could be years before we find out what happened to you.”

“Fine!” Emmet folded his arms over his chest. “Then I stay as a guy. I can live with having a dick if it means you don’t offer yourself up on a platter to the first monster that comes along!”

“He sounds jealous.” Scratch noted mildly.

Regina laughed and Emmet sputtered.

“Very well. If you will not lower the barrier, will you at least relax it?”

“Relax it?” Regina, still smiling at Emmet’s stuttering, turned her attention back to Scratch. “Flaccid things are rarely pleasing or useful.”

Scratch rumbled a chuckle throughout the room, smiling indulgently for her.

“We are doomed to be separate, you and I. Creatures of differing worlds…but those worlds can pass _ever_ so closely to one another.” Scratch dragged his talons down over the shimmering barrier. “Let me close, viper. Let me touch. Let me covet.”

“So you can covet your hands right around my neck and choke the life from me? So my magic can die and leave him trapped here with you? Defenceless?” Regina planted a hand on her naked waist and tilted her head with a smile. “Come now, Little Scratch, we established long ago that I am not a fool.”

“And equally long ago that I would not rest until I have tasted you. This is my price, succulent one. A kiss. A kiss from you and I shall tell you everything you desire about the magic placed upon the boy. A kiss and I give my word that no harm shall befall you for giving your trust unto me. On my name, I swear it, I bear you no ill will and desire nothing save your pleasure. A kiss, mistress. A kiss and I am yours. I shall do nothing you do not want me to.”

“Bad. Plan.” Emmet butted in and both Scratch and Regina glared at him.

They were so wrapped up in one another that they kept forgetting he was there. Which was just bad every which way as far as Emmet was concerned. She was going to get herself hurt and Emmet was seriously beginning to think that he hadn’t mistaken her death wish in the cave with the diamond.

What if she really did want to die?

No. He wouldn’t allow it. No way. Henry would be heartbroken and –despite what Regina may believe- her son did genuinely love her as much as she did him. If this was some sort of bizarre redemption nonsense, he was going to disabuse her of that notion as soon as he could, but he had to first make sure she was alive to do so.

Then again, if she really did want to kiss the demon, he didn’t think there was much –if anything- he could do to stop her.

“It won’t be much of a kiss with this still between us.” Regina turned her attention back to the much more interesting demon.

She pinged a finger against the circle barrier and Scratch gave a low growl when it thunked like a struck pane of glass.

“You humans have sex with barriers all the time. With…rubber? Something flexible, something giving, something yielding.” Scratch pressed one huge hand to the barrier separating him from his prey and pushed a little. “Something…gossamer. The letter of the law, my little aperitif. There must be a barrier betwixt us but no one has ever said how _much_ of a barrier it must be.”

Regina…thought it over.

“Don’t do it.”

“Quiet.” Regina never took her eyes from Scratch but she spoke to Emmet. Couldn’t he see she was in the middle of something? She lifted her hand and pressed it to her side of the barrier opposite Scratch’s huge hand.

“One kiss?”

“Unless you desire more.” Scratch grinned. “I am bound to your wishes whilst I walk this plane, after all.”

Regina snorted a chuckle.

“On the mouth?”

Scratch’s eyes glowed for an instant and his smoke billowed from his nose with a thrumming purring sound vibrating his chest.

“I beg of you to ask for lower.”

“The mouth will do. It’s not like you’ll be able to taste me anyway.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.” Scratch pushed against the barrier again and a thrill caused his tail to whip back and forth when the magic gave under his strength.

It shimmered against his skin, crackling and buzzing. Sparks flew in rainbow hues, it hissed and spat and fought him every inch…but it bent. It flexed, it gave, it yielded to him. Scratch’s eyes glinted when his fingers slowly closed and laced together with hers.

He growled in low appreciation and stepped forward at the same time she did. The magic flared between them, burning them from chest to belly. Lightning struck between them in tiny forks of every colour, it was like pins and needles racing over their skins.

The barrier flickered into visibility here and there giving the impression of the faintest of materials drawn about Regina like a curtain to shield her from the demon wrapping himself around her with a carnal hunger that no mortal man could match.

Scratch tilted his head, nosing the barrier closer and closer to her and finally lapped it against her lips with his tongue.

A shiver went through her and it was all he needed.

Scratch growled and sealed his mouth to hers in a kiss that took her hostage. His lips were surprisingly soft and as crimson as hers though he did not require paint. He kissed her deeply, he kissed her wetly, he kissed her as no one ever had before. Without trace of fear or hatred or anger but simply with a raw and carnal feeling that he ached to spill into her.

It was infectious.

Regina moaned deep in her throat, her head tilting back, giving him easier access. She stretched up against him, his arm coming around her waist, hauling her flush against him. So high that her shoes barely scuffed the floor.

The magic. The magic was everywhere. It was all she could taste, all she could feel. She could feel _him,_ of course, but it was as if through the sheerest of silks. The ghost of sensations yet to come. She squirmed against him, trying to get closer, trying to feel only him and not this flimsy nonsense barrier between them. Her head was throbbing, every inch of her skin pulsing, someone was yelling behind the sounds of the growls rumbling from Scratch’s chest and her mewling moans but she honestly couldn’t tell or care who or what it was.

“You feel as I had hope you would.” Scratch spoke against her mouth, never quite breaking the one kiss he had been promised. “As I had hoped and more. If only I could feel you unhindered by this mess of magic. This malice against the senses.”

Regina hummed deep in her throat in agreement, her hands tangling in his hair and drawing his mouth down over hers again. He kissed her deeply as she wordlessly demanded but did not let her silence him for long.

“Drop it, my sweet.” Scratch sucked on her lip and nibbled with his teeth. His arms wrapped around her, drawing the burning cloth of magic about her and sliding both broad hands down her back to the curve of her ass. He dragged her flush against him and she squirmed against his length. “Drop the barrier and let me take you. Let me take you away from here and love you. Love you for an eternity.”

Regina purred into him, her nails dragging down over his chest, raking furrows into his skin that bled smoke.

“I will teach you a delicious torment.” Scratch whispered to her, nipping kisses along her jaw and letting her pant at the ceiling. “You shall want for nothing. Drop the barrier, my torment. Drop it and let me have you. Let us have one another. Forever.”

“Mmmmhmm.” Regina nodded, her head falling back on a pained groan that melted into a throaty purr when he dragged his talons up her back. Red lines scored lurid on her skin and she hissed in the sweet pain of it.

“The words,” Scratch nipped at her chin, the magic crackling between them, “say it. I need you to say it.”

“I…”

“HEY, NICK!”

Regina’s eyes snapped open when she felt the burst of magic go through the room when Emmet’s shorts flew through the air and slapped Scratch on the face and swung from the point of one horn.

“Come and get me.” Emmet lifted his chin in a challenge at the demon and smudged his toe over the line of chalk at his feet.

The circle broke, Scratch stiffened and several things happened at once.

Regina lashed out with all the magic her addled thoughts could muster, blasting Scratch away from her and sending him spinning across the room. He twisted like a cat in the air and landed on all fours, his eyes on fire and gold lightning flickering over his skin. With a roar, he lunged for Emmet.

Too fast, way too fast. She couldn’t summon another circle around him in time. Not with the chalk all the way over there.

Acting on instinct, Regina stooped, snatched up the hoola-hoop and threw herself towards Emmet. She hurled herself into his arms, praying that he would catch her so she didn’t tumble away from him and end up getting killed herself, and dropped the hoop down over the top of his head. The hoop hit the floor, the magic thrummed in a ring of light and Scratch thundered against it with all the power of a runaway freight train.

“NO!” The demon bellowed, his claws raking at the barrier that sparked blue and gold light. “NO! Thief! Trickster! _DEMON_! How dare you?! How dare you take her from me?!”

Scratch roared, fire spewing from his mouth and splashing against the barrier and away. Regina flinched back from the heat, turning into Emmet’s chest and feeling the magic of the symbols she had painted onto him against her cheek.

 The demon tore the room apart. Candles flew everywhere, wax wheeling and splashing over the floor, fizzling against the circle. Flagstones were torn from the floor and hurled against the walls to shatter. Scratch’s claws shrieked over the walls, peeling back bricks like crumpling egg shells.

“She was to be _mine_!” Scratch advanced on them again, smoke steaming from his nostrils and clouding against the circle. His eyes were burning coals. “Mine alone. Mine to keep. Mine!”

“She belongs to no one but herself.” Emmet shoved Regina behind him and went toe to toe with the demon, only the thin barrier of the circle spell between them. He could feel the crackling of Scratch’s rage even through that. “She’s not for you.”

“She _wants_ me.”

“In that second, sure, in that moment, but not now.” Emmet was aware of Regina’s hands gripping his arms from behind. Whether to hold him back or her up, he didn’t know, but the contact was steadying. Familiar in this hair raising afternoon. “Not ever again.”

Scratch snarled, all of his teeth bared in Emmet’s face.

Emmet clenched his jaw and held his ground. He beat the fear down until he almost didn’t feel it.

“Tell us what is owed.” He demanded. “Tell us what you know.”

Scratch would only growl and Emmet half turned when Regina tugged at him. It was very cramped in this circle made by the hoop. It had caught on his shoulders when she had thrown it over his head to save his life. Emmet twisted and contorted around her to let her sidle in front of him and look up at her demon.

“Scratch, tell me. Tell _me_ what you know.”

Scratch’s chest heaved, his tail lashing back and forth and he glared at Emmet so hard that the barrier between them began to fizzle.

“Do not break your word! If you do the circle will break and I cannot protect you from the rigours of this dimension and you know it!”

Scratch continued to fume, heaving breaths through his steaming nostrils and –finally- he dropped his livid gaze from Emmet to land on Regina. Something in him seemed to soften.

“You were to be mine.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You can’t own something and love it.”

“To love is to be owned.” Scratch shook his head with seeming sadness. “You were to be my morning sun and my evening star. Empires would have risen and fallen with your sigh. You would have burned forever bright at my side. You would have been my most favourite torment…and I yours.”

“Even you don’t deserve me, Little Scratch.” Regina mustered something of a smile. “Tell me what you know and be free of me. Tell me what you know and never know the pain of my shackles again.”

Scratch looked not at all pleased by this offering of release. Rather, he looked resigned.

“There is no spell.” Scratch looked at Emmet with a desolate gaze and shook his head. “The boy reeks of magic, it suffuses his very being, it is a bright and frivolous nonsense, but there is no spell binding him. No dark purpose or malicious will that forces him to be thus. No magic binds him to this form. He is as he is.”

“That’s not possible.” Regina frowned.

“I cannot break my word.” Scratch reminded her. “There is no spell. No magic upon him only that which has always been within.”

Regina looked up at him for a long moment and then finally nodded.

Scratch swallowed hard and shook his head.

“Yes.”

“No!” The demon seethed. “Do not rob me of yourself.”

“You know he would kill us both.” Regina told him firmly. “He can never know what you are. Never. You know as well as I that he would see straight through it. I’m not evil. Not really. He would look and he would know.”

“Then I would die…as me.” Scratch looked away from her, his tail hanging limp on the ground. “Not as the name, not as the demon, but as me.”

“And sentence her to the same fate?” Emmet demanded, not fooled in the slightest. “Some ‘most favourite torment’ that would be! She has a son! You _can’t_ take her away from him!”

Scratch barely flinched at Emmet’s harsh words and he looked down at Regina with the air of a man headed to the gallows.

“You would have borne me the finest of sons and the most wondrous of daughters.” He reached out and traced his fingers over the barrier level with Regina’s face. “I would have loved you unto the ending of all things and beyond. I would have if you would only have let me.”

“You need someone to love you back, Scratch.”

He huffed something of a laugh then.

“How can I? With my father there to kill her at the slightest sign of ‘weakness’ from me?” His mouth twisted in a parody of a smile and something hard and cold turned over in his dark eyes. The gold bled from them and they became nothing but black. “I think…it is time to become his son.”

“Scratch…”

“I shall never be free of him. Not until one of us is dead and the anticipation is killer.” Scratch mustered something of a smile. “Live well, little one. Live well and…remember me?”

“You are unforgettable.” Regina managed a smile and the demon summoned something in return.

“Then say your words and let us speak no more.”

Regina nodded and, heaving in a deep breath, spoke in a hollow voice.

“I cast thee out.”

Scratch braced himself, looked pained for an instant, and then he was gone.

No flash of fire nor plume of brimstone. Not thunder or lightning.

Just…gone.

The thrum of magic that had been constant so long died to a simmering nothing. Emmet’s muscles finally began to unclench and he realised it was safe only when Regina stepped away from him and over the barrier of the hoop on the floor.

She stood in the middle of the room, her bloodied back to him baring her ten scars from Scratch’s claws, and took in the destruction all around her.

Such pain. Such anguish. Such torment.

“Regina…”

“Get out.” Her voice sounded like something dead.

“Regina, I…” Emmet tried again but she flicked her fingers at him and he grunted in surprise when he was suddenly clothed once more.

“ _Go._ ”

“No.” Emmet took another step towards her and she rounded on him with a hiss, her pupils gleaming bright purple in the shadows.

“ _GET OUT!”_

Her voice cracked through the room like a whip, raising fractures in the already shattered walls, sending a tremor racing through the floor.

“NO!” Emmet yelled back admittedly with less special effects. “You’re _bleeding.”_

_“_ I’m ALWAYS bleeding!” She screamed at him. “The only difference now is that you can see it, now _GO!”_

“No!” Emmet refused her again. She needed those cuts looked at. Who knew what kind of bacteria could survive in hell? “You’re hurt. Let me help.”

“With what, _Saviour?_ ” Regina bit at him. “You have NO idea what has just transpired. What I have just…you couldn’t possibly understand.”

“Well, then explain it to me.” Emmet edged closer. “Tell me so I can understand.”

“I don’t know enough small words.” Regina growled at him and he didn’t let it put him off.

“You’re upset, I get that, he put on a good act, but…”

“That was no act, you foolish child!” Regina gritted at him.

“He’s just a demon…”

_Crack!_

Emmet staggered back a step from the stinging slap that she served him across his face. He could feel her handprint throbbing on his cheek and he blinked rapidly. Holy hell, he hoped she never _really_ punched him because evidently what she had done to him the night Graham had died had been a loving pat between friends. Holy crap, his eyes were watering and he was twice her freaking size.

“We are _all_ demons!” Regina got right up in his face. Despite being in her underwear, she still wore her high heels and reached all the way to his chin. “I TOLD you. Demons are not what you think they are. Not what this world’s paltry religion has spewed at you that they are. They love, they hate, they are capable of great evil and wondrous good and I have just broken their prince’s _heart_.”

Regina’s shoulders heaved with every breath and her eyes shone brightly.

“He has _feelings_ , he has a soul and his father is evil incarnate. All he wanted was someone to love him.”

“He was going to take you back to his brimstone pad and fuck you until you died.”

“Then I would have died as me.” Regina spoke with utter honesty and Emmet blinked down at her. Shocked. “We both know that’s the best I can hope for.”

“Regina…”

“Just go.” She shook her head and stepped around him, leaving through the door that swung open at her approach. “Just…leave me.”

“But…your back…” Emmet hurried out of the room after her and it was just as well because it collapsed with a thunderous sound in on itself as soon as he had stepped over the threshold.

There was a great crumpling thunder of motion as the ceiling caved in and the cavernous room was filled with rock and earth.

Regina flicked her wrist and the door slammed closed, melting seamlessly into the wall once more as if it had never been.

“I am well versed in tending my own wounds, Swan. Now get out before I make you get out.”

“I don’t think you should be alone.”

“I don’t think you have a choice.”

“Regina, the blood’s down to the back of your knees. You might need stitches.”

“My constitution is significantly sturdier than that. I’ve survived worse.”

“Survived, sure, but as what?”

Regina jerked to a halt in the corridor with a grate of her heels on the dusty floor. Her head tilted and, slowly, she turned to face him. She had an expression on her face that he couldn’t name and she blinked it away just as quickly.

“Why do you care?”

Emmet floundered a moment, caught off guard by the question. She was a human being in pain, bleeding –onto the floor now- and she wanted to know why he cared?

That told more about Regina to Emmet than he felt comfortable knowing.

 Her chin kicked up and she hummed a derisive sound in the back of her throat.

“Of course. Henry.” She shook her head minutely and her jaw clenched. “Worry not, dear Saviour, he has been saved from me and saved well. You lived up to your legend and then some. He can barely stand to spend time with me. In fact, the only time he calls for me is when he is frightened…when he needs a bigger monster to scare away all the rest.”

“Regina, that’s not it at all.” Emmet shook his head but she spoke over him.

“It is a paltry thing, this shadow of love that he has for me but it _is_ all I have…and I will fight my most darkest desires to the end of time to keep such a fragile and cherished thing alive. If you know nothing else, know that. I will not stray into the dark because it means leaving him in the light.” She shook her head and let loose a sigh. “Now go _away_.”

“It is not all you have and he loves you. He loves you so damn much.” Emmet lunged forward and took her wrist in his hand, spinning her back to face him. “He loves you as much as you love him.”

“Then why does he stay with _you_?”

“Because…he doesn’t know how to ask to come home.”

“He doesn’t have to ask.” Regina shook her head as if it was the most obvious thing in the world and –to her- it was.

“Not to Henry. He thinks he betrayed you.”

“He did.” Regina yanked her wrist from his hold but he just grabbed the other arm to keep her from leaving again. “He went to find _you._ ”

“Yeah, because he saw you were going to the dark and he didn’t know how to stop it and he didn’t want to be left alone in the light!” Emmet huffed out a breath and tried to think before he spoke but it all just came pouring out of him. “He didn’t want to lose the person he loved most in the whole world so he came to find the woman that abandoned him, his very last resort and that _kills me_. It cuts at me every single day that if he hadn’t been so worried about _you_ he’d never have given me a second thought. Because he didn’t need me until he thought you were leaving him.”

“I have never been the one to leave.”

“You leave all the time.” Emmet shook his head. “Every time you get hurt, every time you think you feel too much, every time you get scared. You run and you hide behind that mask you wore for years and you _leave him_.”

“Never!”

“You’re doing it RIGHT NOW!” Emmet resisted the strong urge to shake her. “You’re hurting over what you did and you’re pushing everyone away so you can go away and bleed. So you can go away and _bleed_ , Regina. How do you think that would make him feel? To know that you’d rather let your blood drip onto the floor than let him help you?”

“I’m his mother. I’m not supposed to need his help. He’s a child.”

“Well, I’m not.” Emmet ducked his head so they were nearly at eye level. “Stay here. Stay in the light you’re so afraid of and let me help you.”

“I fear nothing. Least of all you.”

“Prove it.”

Regina looked up at him for a long moment and Emmet twitched violently in surprise when purple smoke engulfed them both. There was a disorientating sensation of the world slithering and reforming around him. He blinked when he found himself in…her bedroom?

“I’m going for a shower.” She wrested her arm from his hold. “The first aid kit is in the drawer below the cutlery in the kitchen. I hope your bandaging skills are superior to your dress sense.”

With that, she spun away from him and disappeared into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her. She didn’t appear to notice that she was still only in her underwear.

 Emmet let loose a slow breath and the tension slowly bled from his body.

He stood there for a long moment, unsure of what to do, then he made a decision.

He was going to go downstairs, find the first aid kit, pour himself a stiff drink and then drink it.

Then he was going to do it again.

 

**_One Shower Later…_ **

 

Regina padded into the kitchen on bare feet and tilted her head when she caught sight of him at the breakfast bar.

 He had a tumbler of her cider in his hand, a bottle of the stuff, another tumbler and the first aid kit on the bar before him. He held the cool glass with the ice clinking in it against his forehead and his eyes were closed.

“A drunk medic. I am truly blessed.”

Emmet didn’t move at all except to open his eyes and, when he saw her, he straightened up.

She wore a pale blue robe cinched tight at her slim waist an apparently little else. Her feet were bare so she looked even smaller than usual. 

Emmet picked up the bottle of cider, pouring some into the spare tumbler and pushed it across the table towards her.

Regina scooped up the glass and drained the contents in a single gulp.

Emmet’s brows rose and he poured her another when she held the glass out.

“You probably shouldn’t get drunk if you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

“I _will_ get drunk if I lose a lot of blood.” Regina saluted him with the glass but restricted herself to a sip. “I’ve not yet lost more than a pint. I’ll live.”

Emmet frowned a little but hopped down off of the stool and waved her towards it.

Regina leaned over the bar to set her glass down and rounded the worktop to slip up onto the stool. Loosening the tie at her waist, she shrugged the robe from her shoulders and let it drop to her hips.

Emmet blinked when confronted with her naked back and found it to be nowhere near the massacre it had been before her shower.

There were angry welts still, a perfect ten card criss-crossing over her back, but they were shallower than the rents the demon had torn into her not even an hour ago. They bled, blood beading and trickling in watery rivulets down over her damp skin, but not as freely as they had done.

“Magic?” Emmet clunked his glass heavily down onto the worktop and wished for another drink even though he knew that was a bad idea. He opened the first aid kit instead and pulled out the anti-septic wipes.

“Clean living.” Regina drawled and sipped from her drink again.

“Of course.” Emmet ripped open the packet of wipes and decided to work from the top down.

He gently dabbed at the wound, waiting for her to flinch at the caustic sting.

Regina went still for a half moment, her glass halfway to her mouth, before continuing the motion and taking another drink.

Emmet’s brows rose at such stoicism but he decided to just get on with it and bent himself to the task of cleaning her wounds.

It was slow going, he needed to change the wipes regularly so as to not just smear more blood into the wounds and he was halfway through the pack of them with a mound of bloodied and crumpled wipes at her elbow before something occurred to him.

She was naked.

Emmet frowned at himself.

Well, obviously she was naked, she’d just gotten out of the shower.

But…she wore nothing. Just a bunching of blue silk about her hips as the robe had split apart high on her thigh when she had folded one leg over the other. No stockings, no panties, no bra and no shoes.

Emmet hadn’t realised until exactly that moment how much of a barrier those lace and silk fragments had been.

“Something wrong?” Regina half turned her head and he shook his even though she wouldn’t be able to see.

“No. Nothing.” He crumpled the last wipe and set it aside. “Does it…really not bother you?”

“What? The cuts?”

“No, the…you’re naked.”

“And?” She twisted a little more so she could see him and made no move at all to pull the robe up.

“You…you’re in your kitchen, in the middle of the day, naked, with a guy and getting drunk and that’s…okay?”

“We single parents take our solitary afternoon thrills where we can.” Regina spoke wryly and drained her glass. She set it on the worktop and looked at him expectantly. “Besides, it is not nearly so interesting as it sounds. You are neither naked, drunk or a man. None of those things are much fun as a solitary activity.”

“Ouch, my masculinity.” Emmet drawled and poured her more cider.

“You’ve had it for all of six hours.” Regina snorted. “Perhaps it is endemic to the gender to become so overly attached to that which flaps between their legs.”

“Hey!” Emmet resisted the urge to shield himself and then her when she turned to look at him, slowly pulling her robe up in deference to her slashed back which was well on the way to being healed. “Enough of the flap talk.”

“Your reproductive organs might as well have been designed by H. Geiger, they spend the majority of their time being about as interesting as a potato, a pair of lychees wrapped in a  bag of spare elbow skin and –when they’re not in that state- they have a mind of their own. So, I’ll talk ‘flap’ all I want.”

Emmet opened his mouth and then started laughing. He just couldn’t not laugh. She was sitting there, the apparent Evil Queen, in nothing but a robe and a sauced smile, getting merrily drunk after spending the afternoon making deals with the devil. Who, incidentally, wasn’t all that bad.

“Speaking of which…” She held up a single finger away from her tumbler.

“Which what?” Emmet chuckled though it died at her next words.

“You need to jerk off.”

“ _What?!”_

       

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regina does stop tormenting him. 
> 
> Eventually. 
> 
> Maybe. 
> 
> Probably. 
> 
> ...but not for a good while yet. :D


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the feedback, guys. Glad you're still enjoying it. 
> 
> I have one more chapter completed after this one and then it's going to be very sporadic updates if at all. I think I will try to write some of this because it is fun and also I have a lot of good scenes for it. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy. 
> 
> Emmet certainly is.

**Chapter 4 – Pipedream**

Emmet stared at Regina for a long moment.

“You want me to what?” He was not stammering and he sternly told himself that there was not a flush crawling all the way up his neck.

“To jerk off.” Regina repeated herself blandly. “Uh…masturbate, beat the meat, have a wank, be your own best friend, date Rosie Palm and her five sisters, go blind, hold your sausage hostage, make much goo about nothing, rub one out, have the safest of sex, wrestle with the purple Cyclops, spank the monkey…you want more? I have plenty.”

“I know what you meant!” Emmet looked horrified and Regina started laughing again. “This isn’t a _joke_ , Regina! My life has kind of been turned upside down and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop gloating so damn much!”

“It’s my house, I’ll gloat if I please.” Regina’s mirth died down to chuckles and she poured herself another drink. “Still, the point stands…or it will. You need to make sure that you are fully functional.”

“I have _been_ to the bathroom. All the…tubes work.” Emmet flapped his arm and Regina started laughing again but drowned it in her drink.

“Be that as it may, there are a few more tubes that you have yet to try unless you have already…?”

“NO!”

“It’s perfectly natural.” Regina shrugged her shoulders. “No need to get so defensive.”

“You want me to go and jerk off and then report back! That’s private!”

“Only if you’re being boring.”

Those words hung in the silence of the room for a long moment and then Regina couldn’t hold it in any longer and dissolved into laughter again.

“Stop it or I’ll spank _you._ ” Emmet folded his arms over his chest and Regina’s chuckles became throaty.

“Promises, promises.”

“God, please stop flirting with me.”

“I am not flirting with you.” Regina rolled her eyes and took another drink. “If I was, you’d be naked by now and this conversation would not be happening. You hold exactly no interest for me, androgynous beast that you are, least of all since we’re not sure that you could…rise to my occasion.” Regina laughed at him and he scowled at her, face crimson.

“I can’t do that. It’s _weird_.”

“It is not weird.” Regina snorted. “Admittedly you may not have much of a sex drive right now because your body is swinging between hormonal extremes but, give or take a day, you’re going to feel like a stallion in rut…or a teenage boy. I’ve never been able to discern much of a difference between the two. When the testosterone hits your prudish little system, you will want to fuck just about anything that moves so it might be advisable to find out if you are capable _before_ you are testicles deep in some…orifice.”

“Oh god, please stop!” Emmet dropped his face into his hands and then scrunched them through his hair.

“It’s a health thing.” Regina enunciated slowly. “Like it or not, this is something you do need to know. So stow your embarrassment and have at it.”

“Right here? Right now?” Emmet glared at her, attempting to call her bluff.

He should have known better.

Regina made a show of looking down at the floor.

“Well, the tiles _are_ wipe clean.”

“Oh, for…!” Emmet snarled. “Stop it!”

“Stop _what?!”_ Regina laughed. “This is a necessary thing. The human body is an embarrassment, why do you think we wear clothes? You do need to be sure that nothing is going to cause you pain. If you manage to change back without knowing, those damages could become more pronounced in the smaller female form. Make sense?”

Emmet just glared at her. His face was a beating red, his hands white knuckled at his sides, and he very nearly shivered with whatever emotion he was repressing.

“I’m not doing it at home.”

“You want to do it here?”

“Not with you watching!”

Regina rolled her eyes.

“As if I would wish to suffer through whatever Neanderthal chicken throttling performance you would put on.” She shook her head and ignored his sound of disgust. “No. You may use the shower. Just be sure to turn the water cold once you are done. I have no desire to have my pipes clogged by the water temperature turning your excretions to the consistency of superglue.”

“How do you even…?”

“I have never been celibate, as well you know, there are things I know about what can transpire between affectionate adults that would make your hair curl. Considering your crushing embarrassment with our prior conversation, I do believe even the scantest of details about the orgiastic festivals of Agrabbah would cause you to expire.” Regina smiled and hummed a chuckle as if recalling a fond memory. “Though Jaffar truly was gifted with that staff of his…”

Emmet opened his mouth and then clapped it closed. He fumed for a moment and looked away from her.

“I’m not a prude.”

“Your reticence over a perfectly natural act notwithstanding?”

“You have to admit it’s a bit more…personal than we’ve ever talked about.”  

“And it shall become more so before we are done. I’ve already seen you naked –yes, I _did_ notice in the summoning room- and you’ve nothing to be ashamed of. If you do not –hmm- take matters into your own hands now,” she muscled down another chuckle, “then it may happen in your sleep and I can think of few more embarrassing fates for you than to have to explain this to your mother in the dead of night.”

Emmet’s eyes went wide and he looked truly horrified.

Regina grinned.

“I hate you.” He decided after a moment and regretted it when he saw something flicker deep in her gaze.

“Be that as it may, this is necessary.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Regina nodded and poured herself another drink. This was all so much funnier with alcohol.

“So, I just…”

“You should at least be passingly familiar with the technique.”

“I mean…”

“I don’t have any top shelf magazines. You’re going to have to use your imagination.”

“Is it a simple switch to turn the shower on?!” Emmet said desperately and Regina hummed.

“Ah, yes, you can use the guest bathroom. This way.” She hopped down off the stool, taking her glass with her and swept past him.

Emmet glanced up at the ceiling, as if he might find some patience there, and then followed after her.

This was _so_ embarrassing.

Regina tottered up the stairs, made a detour by the airing cupboard and then meandered her way into the spare bathroom. She turned the shower on for him, clapped the towel she held against his chest, rummaged out a bottle of hand lotion and then announced that she was going to watch television as she had to catch up with _The Blacklist_.

Whatever the hell that meant.

Emmet watched her go, slamming the door closed behind her, and then looked about himself. He huffed out a slow breath and dropped the towel on top of the hamper. Eyeballing the _huge_ bottle of hand lotion she had left out, Emmet decided to lock the door and…get it over with.

He kicked off his shoes and pulled off his socks, shucking his jeans and shrugging easily out of his shirt. Regina hadn’t bothered to put his shorts back on him when she had summoned his clothes to him (probably because Scratch had immolated them in his temper) so it was no time at all until he was completely naked.

Now what?

Emmet rolled his eyes at himself and decided he had to get over this. It was his body and –whilst he’d never admit it to her- Regina was right. it was a perfectly natural function and if his body really was going to start acting like a teenager’s then he’d much rather be aware of what it would be like in a private situation.

Before he could change his mind, Emmet whipped the shower curtain back and stepped into the bath.

He hummed out a low and pleased sound when the hot water hit his chest. He hadn’t actually had the opportunity to shower yet, outrunning swords and failing to duck swinging lamps taking up most of his morning, so he focussed on getting clean rather than think about what he was there to do.

He washed his hair with the shower gel he found and then cleaned down his chest, arms and legs (studiously avoiding _that_ area) and rinsed himself down. He did it twice to make sure he’d gotten rid of all of whatever caustic solution she’d painted him with.

Well…at least he didn’t have to worry about shaving or waxing anymore. Not his legs or underarms anyway. His face was going to be tricky. He’d never shaved his face before. He imagined it would be much the same but…maybe there was something weird about facial hair?

“You’re procrastinating, Emmet.” He told himself when he realised he was pondering facial hair. “Stop using up all the witch’s hot water and get on with it.”

Having given himself a stern talking to, Emmet leaned out and picked up the bottle of hand lotion. He pumped a generous amount into his large hand and…started to laugh.

He couldn’t help it. It was so ridiculous.

He was supposed to just…he wasn’t even in the mood. He kind of understood where Regina was coming from, but…fuck. This was embarrassing knowing that she was somewhere in the house exactly aware of what he was doing or about to do if he could ever work up the nerve.

He rolled his eyes at himself.

Like she would even care. She was probably sitting on the couch right that second, drinking cider and watching her TV show not giving him a second thought at all. She’d be too absorbed in James Spader’s antics to think about Emmet wrestling with himself in the shower.

Emmet started to snicker at himself again and sternly told himself to be serious.

Reaching down and trying not to think too hard, Emmet grabbed…himself.

He went still and mulled the sensation over. Not…bad.

Not great but not cripplingly embarrassing either.

Emmet gave an experimental stroke and hummed at the sensation that rolled up his entire body from the root of his cock.

He ignored that bizarre thought and looked down to see this alien man hand of his wrapped around his own dick. Now that he didn’t have tits in the way he could actually see down the length of his body and there was actually something to see. It was strange and weirding him out a little but he didn’t feel bad about the sensation of his slick fist sliding up and down the length of him so that was something.

His cock began to stiffen and Emmet leaned back against the tiles his head falling back when the hardening of his dick between his fingers intensified what he was feeling.

It was different, obviously, to the feeling of getting off as a woman. The feelings were…harsher. Rising in sharper waves rather than a slow build up. His fist quickened in pace and his hips rocked in response to it. He felt a growl rumble out of his chest and suddenly understood where Scratch had been coming from when he’d made that racket whilst sticking his tongue down Regina’s throat.

Emmet’s cock throbbed and his eyes snapped open at that thought.

Well…it had been pretty hot.

Scratch had been huge and well muscled, the epitome of primal masculinity but Regina…Emmet had never seen anything like what Regina had been like in the demon’s arms.

She had been so…soft. So giving, so yielding. He’d never seen her act like that about anything.

She had bent back under Scratch’s advance, craning her head back and opening her mouth to his thrusting tongue. Her back had arched and she’d clutched him to her, her nails raking down over Scratch’s chest.

Emmet dragged the nails of his free hand down over the cobbled muscles of his torso and his hips flexed, thrusting his cock into his hand.

Regina had clutched at him, tunnelling her fingers into his hair and lifting one leg to slide it up over the hard muscle of his. She had moaned, those greedy little sounds that had been more like ravenous hunger than anything sexual. Pushing up against him, kissing him back, biting at his lip and sucking on his tongue. Her eyes had fluttered closed and she’d rubbed up against him. Desperate to be closer, clawing for more contact.

Emmet wondered what would have happened had he not been there to stop things from escalating.

Would she have agreed to go back to hell with the demon and let him have his wicked way? Would she have come to her senses and pushed him away?

Would she have done both?

Knowing Regina, she’d have had her cock and fucked it too.

She’d have had Scratch take her then and there with the magic of the flimsy barrier flickering between them.

Those huge red hands of his would have slid down her back, smearing the blood and hooked his claws into the material of her panties.

He’d have tugged, once, twice, tightening the material against her and making her gasp. He’d have tasted her little scream on his thrusting tongue when he ripped them away. She’d have shivered at the raw feeling of the wet silk being drawn from between her legs. His hands would span her ass, lifting her off the floor. Her legs would cinch tight around his hips, drawing him close, and her wet cunt would slide up against his throbbing cock.

Emmet growled the same way Scratch had and reached down to take his cock in both hands. Now that it was fully hard, he needed both. His chest was heaving and his heart pounding but he didn’t want it to stop just yet.

What next?

She’d take him by the horns, of course she would. Her small fingers would wrap around the base of the huge curling horns and then stroke up over the length of them. From the steel sharp point to the thick base buried in his hair.

Could he feel that?

Yeah. Why wouldn’t a demon have erogenous zones sticking out of his head?

He’d groan into her mouth at that tugging sensation. It would join up with the throbbing lightning travelling up his spine from the root of his cock. His hips rolled under hers, nudging closer and closer to her wet entrance.

God, she was going to feel good.

Hot and tight and wet. She was going to wrap around every inch of him and _squeeze_.

His hands tightened on her hips, shifting her angle and pulling her towards him. His hips flexed, his cock head smearing through her folds and then slipping inside.

Just a little, just the tip, but then she gave another hungry little moan, sucking hard on his tongue and he yanked, dragging her down onto him, shoving his whole length brutally into her.

Regina screamed into his mouth, her hands clawing down into his shoulders and dragging down over his chest. She bucked against him, writhing in his arms and he leaned back to balance them both whilst her slick inner muscles twisted around his cock. She was hot, she was tight and she was _so_ wet.

His head bent, taking the material of her bra in his teeth, and yanking the garment out of his way. His lips closed around her nipple and he licked hard then sucked it between his teeth, biting just a little.

Her heels dug into his ass, urging him to take her harder, deeper. Her nails scored burning lines down his back and her head fell back so she could pant at the ceiling.

Not enough, not enough leverage.

He turned, pushing her up against the tiled wall and she huffed out a breath at the impact. His hand was behind her head to make sure she didn’t get hurt but then his cock was balls deep in her and she was whimpering.

The sounds. It was the sounds she made. Those hungry little mewls. He wanted to hear more. He wanted to hear all of them.

He pinned her to the wall, her heels scoring into his ass with every buck of his hips against hers. His cock plunged into her again and again, almost pulling completely out before sliding viciously back in hard enough to knock the air from her lungs with every pummelling thrust.

She was close, her cries getting louder, her movements more frantic. He rammed into her harder. Her fingers were in his hair, tugging at the length of it, her tongue in his mouth tasting him, licking him. She was so hot and tight around him, beginning to shiver, to quake.

The water of the shower cascaded down over them both, their skins sliding together, slippery and smooth and wet. She rubbed her nipples against the hair on his chest, purring at the sensation.

“Harder.” She moaned into him. “Fuck me harder.”

Emmet redoubled his efforts, bracing one hand against the wall and ramming her with every ounce of his strength. She groaned, her back arching, the angle changing so that the base of his cock banged up against her clit with every thrust.

She went wild, her nails tearing into his back and shoulders, her teeth sinking into his lip and her legs scissoring tight about his hips. She bucked against him, dragging his head down so that he had to take her nipple into his mouth again. To bite, to suck, to soothe. He suckled one and then the other and buried his face in the valley of her cleavage, growling happy growls.

His hands fastened to her hips and he yanked her down onto his cock every time he thrust up into her with deep and punishing strokes. The angle changed again until the base of his cock was grinding against her clit with every roll of his hips and he thrust slow and deep into her.

She gasped, her head falling back and he took her throat in his teeth and bit down.

Hard.

She came, shattering around him, bucking hard and screaming. Her nails clawed him, completely out of control, her hips thrashed against his and he followed her over. How could he not?

Emmet came and he came _hard._

He opened his eyes to see his red cock jerking in his hand, white come arcing through the air and splattering against the tiles in long and draining jets. His hips bucked and he had never made sounds like the desperate groans that were heaving from his chest with every twitch his tortured cock gave.

Emmet’s shaking legs folded and he slithered down onto his knees, leaning forward to catch himself on his elbow against the wall, his forehead braced against his forearm. He shivered all over, like a racehorse run ragged. Lightning aftershocks raced up and down his back and along his arms and legs. He trembled violently and panted hard.

Regina.

He had just…about Regina.

Emmet looked down at his dripping cockhead and realised he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

 _Fuck._        

 

**_Later…_ **

 

Regina was tucked up on the couch, watching the television and eating ice cream, when Emmet finally slunk down the stairs.

It had taken him quite a while to get over himself and summon the courage to face her again. He padded down the stairs in bare feet as she hadn’t summoned his shoes back to him and combed his fingers through his damp hair. He had been hiding upstairs so long that it was nearly dry. He walked carefully into the living room and –cautiously- sat down on the armchair beside the couch.

Regina gave no reaction, rapturously watching the television and sucking on the spoon in her mouth. She had a pint of Hagen Daaz in her hand, her tumbler and bottle of cider on the coffee table and she had changed her outfit from nothing but the robe to a set of silk pyjamas, sheepskin bootie slippers and a much thicker quilted robe.

She looked…nice.

She looked normal.

Emmet shied away from that.

“So!”

He flinched when the show went to commercial and Regina turned to him.

“How did it go?”

Emmet turned bright red and she grinned lasciviously.

“That well, hmm?”

“Everything works.” Emmet resisted the urge to fold his hands on his lap.

“No pain? No blood?”

“No!”

“Emmet, you’re a prude. I have to ask these things. You’re not just going to _tell_ me.”

“I’m NOT a prude!”

Regina tilted her head and sucked more ice cream from her spoon. She flicked her eyes to the television and then back to Emmet.

“I shall ignore that as it is a blatant lie.” She steamrollered over his protests. “Though this is a good thing. The change appears to be a healthy one.”

“You already said that this morning!”

“Yes, in front of Henry. I wasn’t likely to tell him that –if you had done this to yourself- you might have forgotten to add something important in the switch.”

“Important like what?”

“Nothing major.” Regina shrugged a shoulder. “Though it’s common to miss out a portion of the lower intestine and –for some reason- all of the pancreas. Ice cream?” Regina held the tub out to him with a deceptively innocent smile.

“I think if I was going to go hypoglycaemic then it would have happened by now.” Emmet scowled at her.

“If you were going to go hypoglycaemic, ice cream would help.” Regina smirked at him and went back to eating the ice cream herself. 

Emmet growled.

“Don’t be so dour.” She told him firmly and reached out with one toe to hit the button on the remote that paused her show when it came back on. “This is also a good thing.”

“Because I’m not going to suddenly drop dead? For once, we agree on something.” Emmet pressed his hands together between his knees and changed his mind when things…chafed.

He was _really_ sensitive down there with it all hanging out.

Really sensitive.

“Well, I’d rather you didn’t do that in the living room, the carpets are a bitch to get blood out of.” She continued before he could ask if that was from personal experience. “Still, this tells us more about what might have happened to you. This afternoon has actually been very informative.”

“For you maybe.”

Regina heaved a sigh and rolled her eyes.

“I’m giving up Blacklist for _this?_ ” She seemed to speak mostly to herself and then turned back to Emmet. “If you’d been paying attention, you’d have noticed several things; the first being that you _are_ aggressive now when I push you. This means that your endocrine system is fully functional which is _another_ thing that amateur sorcerers tend to forget amongst the change. You ate at Granny’s and didn’t throw it up so the food has somewhere to go, your digestive system appears to be functional rather than just a bag that stores food and doesn’t go anywhere. It will take a few days to notice signs of malnutrition which will become evident if all of your intestines aren’t as absorptive as they should be…”

“What happens if they’re not?” Emmet’s eyes were wide and he looked so suddenly frightened that even Regina took pity on him.

“Then we can make changes.”

“You said you couldn’t change me back!”

“And I wasn’t lying.” Regina told him firmly with an impatient tone. “This will all go a lot faster if you trust me to know what I’m talking about.”

“That doesn’t make any sense though!” Emmet threw up his hands. “How can you change one part of me and not the other?”

“Because I’d be holding the spell for the rest of your natural life!” She snapped, teeth bared and pupils glinting purple. Emmet backed down before she really felt cornered and she continued in a calmer tone. “I _could_ force you to take another form but it would _be_ a compulsion. You would begin to feel confined, trapped, you’d feel ill at ease all the time. Paranoia would set in and synaesthesia would begin to occur.”

“What’s that?”

“The inversion of the senses.” Regina thought for a moment of a suitable example and then held up her spoon. “Like when you have a migraine and you can ‘feel’ sounds as physical pain. Imagine that but with all five senses.”

Emmet wrinkled his nose in evident distaste and Regina nodded.

“Exactly.”

“But…wouldn’t all that happen to my guts if you had to force them to do that?”

“It would be painful.” Regina nodded. “But you would survive.”

“Okay.” Emmet’s voice was suddenly small and Regina found herself struck with the bizarre urge to comfort him.

“Still, if everything else has changed healthily then it is unlikely to have occurred. You are probably fully functional.” She shrugged a shoulder.

“Well, that’s something, I guess.” He was quiet for a moment and then leaned forward, picking up her glass and draining it in one gulp. He winced a little at the taste and then refilled it but left it for her. “What else did you learn?”

“Herein things become…muddied.”

“Muddied how?”

“Scratch.” Regina looked down into her ice cream and dug at it with her spoon for a moment. She forced herself to brighten. “Desirous of kidnapping me or not, he was bound to tell the truth and the truth he told us is…impossible.”

“Sherlock.” Emmet hunched his shoulders.

She frowned at him.

“You’ve never read Sherlock Holmes?”

“You can read?”

“Would it kill you to just…answer a civil question with a civil answer for once?”

“Who knows, why take the chance?”  

Emmet glared at her and she relented.

“I’m learning Egyptian hieroglyphs so I can read the Book of the Dead. I haven’t read anything in English for pleasure in decades. Even then, if we’re going to talk Victorian authors, why not Poe?”

“Book of the Dead?” Emmet huffed out a slow breath. “Dare I ask why?”

“Commissioned work.” Regina shrugged a shoulder.

“Commis…who? Who commissioned you to read up on necromancy?!” Emmet had watched enough movies to glean what the Book of the Dead was about even if the clue hadn’t been in the name.

“That is between me and my client.” Regina pointed her chocolate smeared spoon at him and then licked it clean. “None of your business.”

“I’m the Sheriff! It kind of is!”

“There is absolutely nothing in the town charter that says anything about raising the dead.” Regina told him primly. “I’m breaking no laws.”

“There’s the law and then there’s right and wrong.” Emmet growled at her.

“Luckily, for us morally inept, it is only the law that is your purview.”

Emmet glared at her.

“Now, back to the matter at hand, Sherlock?”

Emmet huffed out a measured breath through his nose and glared at her. Slowly, he relaxed.

“Something about ruling out all the logical solutions and whatever’s left, no matter how stupid it seems, must be possible because it’s the _only_ explanation.”

“You’re paraphrasing, I take it?”

“Yeah.”

“How common.” Regina looked down at her ice cream and jabbed at it thoughtfully with her spoon. “A grain of truth to it though. Unfortunately, I have no idea what _is_ left.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Scratch is bound to the truth and I know more than most that there are ways of being truthful and not honest but his words…he said there were no spells on you. No magic binding you to this form and that…that was very honest.”

“He said something about it not being malicious…if I wished this on myself, I didn’t do it to harm me. I did it so I’d be better at defending myself. That’s hardly malicious.”

“True…” Regina was lost in thought a long moment. “Though a wish still counts as magic. He said there was nothing in you that hadn’t already been in you which means…” Regina’s head cocked to the side and her eyes took on a faraway look.

“What?” Emmet leaned forward and hesitantly touched her knee.

She flinched badly.

“What?! I was reading.”

Emmet looked at her for a long moment and began to grow just a little more concerned than he already was.

“Reading?”

“Yes. Reading.” She frowned at him.

“Reading what?”

“A book.” Regina frowned harder. What else would she be reading?

“Where?”

Regina reached up and tapped her temple.

“You…you _memorised_ books?”

“I told you I had as many as are in the Library of Congress. At least.” She continued before he could start that infernal sputtering again. “In case you hadn’t noticed –whilst the Vault is large- there are certain spatial constraints. Not so in my head. Most books were…borrowed…learned and given back to their original owners.”

“With or without their knowledge and consent?”   

“We’re getting off topic again.”

“Is there a crime you _haven’t_ committed?”

Regina mulled it over, sucking another mouthful of ice cream from her spoon. She dragged her tongue over her lip and Emmet reminded himself that he was supposed to be interested in men. As he was straight…or he had been. Now he was gay?

This was far too confusing. Best to just stop thinking about it.

“I have neither evaded taxes nor impersonated one of the clergy…ah, no. Just the tax thing.” Regina ate more ice cream and chuckled low in her throat. “Rumple in a habit. One of our funnier misadventures.”

Emmet opened his mouth and Regina spoke over him.

“Back to what I was reading. I think you were cursed before.”

“Is this confession time? Shall _I_ impersonate one of the clergy?”

“Shut up.” She shook her head. “Scratch said that there was nothing in you or on you that had not been there before but he did not specify before _when_. Typical demon tricksiness.”

“Tricksiness?”

“Shut up.” Regina ordered him again. “Which means, you were bespelled _before_ whenever Scratch was talking about.”

“Which would be…?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know? The last time I tried to curse you, my son ended up dying.” Regina swallowed hard despite her glib tone and forged on. “It put a little bit of a damper on my ardour for such things.”

“There’s a way to find out, though. Right?” Emmet wanted to draw her quickly from such a dark place.

Regina’s head tilted back a little and she took on another unfocussed look. Her lips pursed and she absently licked more melting ice cream from her spoon. She nodded slowly.

“I think so…I’ll need time to gather supplies. To construct a spell.” She narrowed her eyes and thought a moment. She smiled suddenly. “Well, that would be a fitting symmetry. Yes, I think I can write something suitable.”

“Write?”

“The spell.” Regina focussed on him fully once more and then frowned. “What?”

“You can do that? Just…make up stuff?”

“Of course.” Regina scraped at the bottom of her ice cream tub and made a displeased sound when she discovered it empty. “Did you really think I took over half a continent without being able to write new _spells_?”

“Well…I just figured you used what Gold taught you.”

“Gold has taught me very little, the imp –however- taught me a great deal. The first of which was to learn how to pull tricks he had never seen before if I wanted to live out the week.”

Emmet looked at her as she set her empty tub of ice cream aside and picked up her glass of cider.

“How, exactly, did he teach you?”

Regina was quiet for a long moment and then lifted her shoulder in a casual shrug.

“With pain.”

Emmet shifted uncomfortably with that and she watched the reaction with interest, like she had never seen the like before, but said nothing.

“That is not entirely true,” she elaborated after a moment, “it began very much like any devil would. With seduction and sweet nothings and the temptation of much grander delights… _then_ came the pain. When I was in too deep to struggle free. I was in no danger with Scratch, you see. I do learn from _some_ of my mistakes.” Regina mustered a bitter smile.

“Wait, you and Gold…?”

“Oh, no!” Regina wrinkled her nose and then chuckled. “No. There are no words for what we are to one another but ‘lovers’ is certainly not somewhere in the definition.”

“Oh.” Emmet could think of no other response to that and decided not to think about the unclenching sensation of relief in his chest.

“No, the temptations offered by Rumple were of a more…tender nature. He saw far deeper into me than I ever could have guessed at the time and he used my weakness effortlessly.” Regina shrugged. “Never trust him, Emmet. Not once. The son of the Devil himself was kinder to me and that should tell you a lot. Even should you decide to go to him for help over me…do not trust him.”

“I’m good with you.” Emmet hunched his shoulders. “I trust you.”

Regina smirked and tilted her head.

“A horrible decision, really.”

“Says you.” Emmet mustered something of a smile and then looked away from her. “I don’t think you’re as bad as you make out, Regina. If you wanted me dead, you could have done it a million times but –despite everything- I don’t think killing comes easy to you.”

“Of course not.” Regina spoke with utter seriousness. “It’s the living that suffer. Why should I ever want to grant someone the reprieve I never had?”

Emmet’s eyes darted back to hers and he hoped that she was lying. He really did. If she was drunk enough to tell him the truth then…then he didn’t know what. He just knew that he didn’t want her to suffer that way. To be _pained_ by being alive? Nobody deserved that.

“Pity not the Evil Queen.” Regina lifted her tumbler of cider and drained it in a single gulp. “Now, I believe you have outstayed your welcome.”

Emmet stood when she wobbled to her feet and let her steer him towards the door.

“You’ll have the spell ready tomorrow?”

“Perhaps.” Regina snagged the bottle of cider on the way to the door and gurgled more into her glass.

“Perhaps?”

“Well, I was planning on spending the morning nursing a hangover, then I have to actually go and buy the things I need to implement said spell.”

“Run out of eye of newt, have we?”

“Salamander.” Regina swung the door open and blinked at the rain that slashed down from the eves of the roof.

When had it begun to rain?

She blinked at the torrent of water and then turned back to Emmet when he spoke.

“What?”

“Eye of salamander.” She belatedly corrected him. “Newts are common, flaming lava swimming amphibians less so. Off you go.” She waved him towards the door.

“It’s raining.”

“ _So_ observant.”

“Do you have an umbrella I could borrow at least?” Emmet glared down at her and she shook her head.

“It’s just water.”

“I wouldn’t make you walk home in the rain.”

“But you’re the good guy.” Regina drank more cider and then rolled her eyes. She scooped up her car keys from the hallway table and thrust them at him. “Fine, but if you scratch it, I’ll skin you and no one would blame me.”

“You’re giving me your car?” Emmet warily accepted the keys for the black Mercedes in the drive.

“Loaning.” Regina finished her cider again and grimaced when she found the bottle empty. Ah well, plenty more where that came from. “You’d be folded in half in that yellow monstrosity of yours anyway.”

That was true. It was snug when he had been a foot shorter than he was now. He didn’t even want to think about how cramped it would be now.

“Thank you.”

Regina shrugged negligently and leaned heavily on the door.

“I mean it, Regina, thank you for helping me.”

“I haven’t even done anything.” Regina shook her head.

“You did what you always do. You took over and let the rest of us freak out so…thanks.”

“Well…habit.” She shrugged a shoulder again and wished he would just go away so she could get properly drunk.

“When shall I come over tomorrow?”

“I’ll call you.” Regina decided slowly. “And it may not be tomorrow. Spells take time and the one I have planned is complex. Also, hangover.” She waggled her glass at him.

“Drink some water, huh?” Emmet looked down at her glass. “Eat something too?”

“Careful, Saviour, you sounded almost concerned.” She smirked at him.

“I am.” Emmet frowned a little as if the admittance surprised him as much as it did her. “Scratch’s troubles aren’t your fault. You were his friend, I think, which helped him. You gave him hope. That’s not a bad thing.”

“Giving someone false hope is one of the worst things you can do.” Regina looked away from him, her eyes shining over bright.

“It wasn’t false.” Emmet reached out, taking her wrist in his hand so that she had to look at him. “You helped. I promise.”

“Your promises mean nothing.” Regina yanked her arm from his hold. “Now get out.”

Emmet’s jaw clenched and he nodded shortly. Fine. He stepped out onto the porch and flinched when she slammed the door behind him. He hissed out a breath between his teeth and glared back at the door.    

“Just when I think I could like her…” Emmet shook his head sharply and jangled the keys in his hand.

He glanced down at them.

Well, now he felt like a heel.

She’d had no reason to give him the keys to her car. She had even less reason to help him at all.

Well, her amusement at his embarrassment might have gone a ways to balancing their account, but the thing with Scratch…Emmet had little doubt that it would have happened eventually. It might not have gone so favourably for Regina had Emmet not been there to stop things from escalating, from the demon stealing her away, but the niggling doubt remained…what if she’d been happier like that?

Scratch had done a pretty good impression of caring for Regina and –judging by the will she plied herself to achieving a drunken stupor- she had cared for him too, which was more than she did for just about anyone. They had been important to one another and –because of Emmet- she’d cut them off from one another.

Maybe it would have happened anyway but…maybe not.

Maybe they’d have found a way to be closer if not together and now –because she’d been helping Emmet and because he’d interfered- they never could.

How different would Regina be with a friend? How different would she be with someone in her corner?

Emmet looked down at the keys in his hand. The car key, a house key, another smaller key he didn’t recognise and a small keychain. It was a tatty little teddy bear shaped thing, made of felt and sloppily stitched together. It was a brown that had faded with age, one of its black bead eyes having been lost long ago and the red heart that had been stitched onto its chest so large that it spanned it completely from under one arm to the other. Emmet turned it over and saw more stitching over the back.

_To momy, love HeNry, xxxx._

Emmet smirked and ran his large fingers over the stitched words.

Four kisses. Emmet had never had anything from Henry with anything near that amount of affection. 

He shied away from that and thought of what he knew of Regina, the cold, hard, Mayor, and how he never would have pegged her for carrying around something so…so human. How he never would have thought that she’d have something so evidently sentimental where anyone might see it. Where they might see such softness from her…but that wasn’t true.

She had pictures of Henry everywhere, not to show him off like some kind of trophy –as Emma had first thought when she had met Regina- but…as a reminder. That he was still there. That he was hers…or that he had been.

She even had a plaster cast of his handprint on her desk at the Mayor’s office.

Emmet was beginning to get the uncomfortable feeling that there was a lot more to Regina than he had ever cared to look for and if just Henry could bring that out in her…what _would_ she be like with a friend?

What would she really be like with someone in her corner?

Emmet snatched the keys up in his hand and strode out into the rain, hunching against the downpour and hurrying into the car.

He winced when his knees were nearly up to his ears in the cramped vehicle, she really WAS tiny, but he adjusted the seat and found it much more comfortable.

Emmet turned the engine over and glanced up at the big house looming over him. The engine thrummed to life and he made a promise to himself. One that he vowed _would_ mean something.

He would try to be her friend.

Emmet snorted at himself and added a dose of realism to that.

‘Try’ being the operative word.  

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this is the last one I have completely written out. 
> 
> I'm going to try and write more of the next chapter today so we'll see how successful that is. At the moment, I'm just trying to write ANYTHING with success so updates will be somewhat sporadic.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me so far and I hope you continue to enjoy it.

**Chapter 5 – Very Trying**

 

“Rubes, quit staring.”

Emmet looked up from his menu at the waitress and she flinched guiltily.

“Sorry, Emm…et.” Ruby’s lips twitched and she admirably fought it down. She dropped down into the seat opposite him. He noticed only then that she wasn’t carrying her notepad or wearing her apron.  “But, to be fair, you’re totally worth ogling.”

“You’re old enough to be my mother.” He reminded her coolly and slapped his menu back down onto the table.

“And yet, still hot.” Ruby held up her hands with a grin and then laughed at his scrunched up nose of distaste. “Oh, come on, don’t be like that. It’s not that bad.”

“It’s pretty bad.” Emmet looked back down at the menu rather than try to tolerate her amusement.

Things hadn’t really improved when he’d left Regina yesterday.

He’d walked back into the loft to find disappointed faces all round when he’d still been him. It had hurt more than he’d realised it would to have them…want him to be someone else. He was still _him._ He wasn’t any different on the inside, it was just the packaging.

Snow and David had put a brave face on it. She’d brightly offered to cook them all a big meal as Emmet had to be hungry and…they’d all thrown themselves into it.

Except for Henry, who’d demanded to know where Regina was. He’d flinched away when Emmet had tried to pull him into a hug –to comfort them both- and that had cut him like a knife.

Henry had looked guilty, because the thought of hurting anyone was abhorrent to him, but he still hadn’t been able to bring himself to do more than awkwardly pat Emmet on the arm and make an excuse at homework to disappear up the stairs to his bedroom.  Emmet knew shit had to be bad if the kid would rather do homework than be anywhere near him.

After that, Emmet had decided it would be better for him to sleep on the couch and that had been an exercise in discomfort that he could have definitely done without. He’d woken up exhausted, sore and…hard.

Which had been worse since he’d had the uncomfortable feeling at what fitful dreams he had managed to fall into had revolved around a certain sorceress and a replay of the fantasies of the day before.

So he’d slunk off for a cold shower –an uncomfortable experience that he never wanted to repeat- and had snuck out of the apartment in yesterday’s clothes before anyone had woken up. Getting back into Regina’s car and beating back the urge to go to the manor, he had gone for a drive.

Anywhere, nowhere, it hadn’t mattered. He’d just needed time to think and all he’d managed to think about was how fucked up all of this was…so he’d ended up at the diner. His cell on the table beside him, waiting for it to ring so he could go to Regina and hope whatever spell she’d managed to cook up might help him get out of this hell.

He glared at his phone when it continued not to ring.

She had _better_ call today.

“Hey, you okay?”

Emmet’s head jerked up when Ruby’s hand came down over his. Any mirth at his predicament was gone and nothing but concern shone in her pale eyes.

“I’m fine.” Emmet pulled his hand away and clenched it into a fist seemingly without realising. “I just…kind of wish you hadn’t told everyone. I’d have liked to get used to this myself before all the gawking began.”

The staring was probably the worst thing. Henry flinching back from him was pretty bad, having the whole meat and two veg baggage was worse but the _staring_ from everyone and their dog was seriously beginning to grate.

“We didn’t…” Ruby frowned, shaking her head and then stopped herself. “Think it would do any harm. Better than you having to repeat yourself all the time, right?”

_Liar._

Emmet’s superpower whispered in his head and he frowned mulling that over. His expression became blank rather than try and keep up with all the emotions that thundered through him when he realised what she was hiding.

“Snow. Right. Of course.” His jaw clenched. “Let me guess, she shared with my diminutive ‘ _uncles’_ and Leroy just had to…!” Emmet cut himself off before he gave in to the Neanderthal urge to start growling and smashing things.

Ruby opened her mouth to lie again and then clipped her teeth together instead. She heaved a sigh and propped her chin on her hand. She offered a wan smile.

“Snow’s a talker. She asks for advice when she doesn’t know what to do and –some of the time- she doesn’t think about the discretion of whoever she’s asking.”

“I don’t see why.” Emmet snapped. “She just does what she wants anyway.”

Ruby blinked languidly at that but gave no defence or condemnation to her friend. She knew Snow as well as anybody did and she knew her faults intimately. Snow was a lot of things, loyal, fair, true and forgiving to a fault…but respect for people’s personal issues was not one of her virtues.

Like it or not, had Snow been able to keep her mouth shut about such things, none of them would be in this mess.

“That’ll be the royal in her.” Ruby finally said and offered another smile. “She’s just trying to do the best she can with something that threw her for six.”

“ _She’s_ not the one that has to deal with morning glory!” Emmet snapped back and regretted it immediately when Ruby’s face froze and gradually turned red. “Don’t you dare laugh.”

“No.” Ruby’s mouth worked, trying to keep the laugh down. “Nope, no laughing here.”

“I mean it. I had Regina laughing at me ALL day yesterday. I’ve had my fill.”

“Well, obviously not if you’re waking up with…” Ruby cut herself off into a drawn out snort of amusement and then tried desperately to shake it off. “Sorry.”

“Laugh it up.” Emmet shrugged his huge shoulders and flopped back against the bench of the booth. “You and everyone else.”

“Oh, come on, self-pity’s not a good colour on you.” Ruby became serious again. “At least you’re still human shaped. When _I_ underwent an involuntary change I turned into a giant many toothed beast that ate whatever it came across.” She hunched her shoulders in a shrug. “You’re still in control, Emmet. Maybe not of the way you look, but of all your other faculties. It’s still _you_ in there. Everything else is just window dressing and that’s definitely not the worst thing that can happen to you.”

Emmet sobered a little and then let loose a sigh.

“Granny put you up to this?”

“No.” Ruby told him archly laying a hand to her chest. “As godmother, I took it upon myself to ensure your emotional wellbeing in the absence of your parents…even if they’re absent because you ran away at stupid o’clock this morning. Yeah. They called.” Ruby answered his unspoken question and Emmet hunched his shoulders a little in shame.

He hadn’t meant to worry anyone. He’d just needed some space.

“I didn’t know you were my godmother.”

“I _am_ your godmother…or I would have been if you’d been there for the head wetting ceremony. It was never made official but…I dunno. I didn’t think I needed it to be for me to look out for you.”

“You look younger than me.” Emmet hunched his shoulders and shook his head. “And now you’re half my size. It’s weird to think of you looking out for me.”

“Many toothed beast.” Ruby pointed to herself. “Under the skin. I’ll look out for you if I damn well please and there are _very_ few creatures that walk, crawl, scuttle or fly that could stop me. I don’t care how old you are or I look.”

Emmet mustered something of a smile.

“Thanks, Ruby.”

“Ah, but all of this is a ruse.” Ruby clapped her hands together and grinned wickedly. “I’m really here to spend your money.”

Emmet frowned at her and Ruby bounced gleefully in her seat.

“Shopping!”

“Ugh, no, Ruby…”

“Nope! Godmother’s orders. Those clothes do NOT fit and they stink and you’ll feel MUCH better once you’re in something that’s yours and not your dad’s.”

Emmet’s face was still drawn into a frown but he couldn’t argue with that.

“Come on, it’ll be fun.” Ruby bounded out of her seat, gripped him by the arm and hauled him out of his side of the booth with an effortless strength that made it clear she’d look after him whether he wanted it or not.

“I doubt that.”

“It will be _oodles_ of fun!” Ruby laughed at him, wrapping her arm through his and steering him towards the door, giving a few meaningful glares at the worst of the staring offenders on her way.

“I hate shopping and that was even before I turned into a guy.”

“Which explains that stupid red jacket of yours.” Ruby drawled and shoved him out the door with a jangle from the bell.

“That was a gift.” Emmet glared at her.

“And now I don’t have to shred it in order for you to not wear it anymore.” Ruby grinned brightly at him, clopping down the steps and onto the sidewalk after him. “Seriously though, Regina nearly had enough signatures on her petition for a sacrificial burning.”

“Don’t.” Emmet’s tone finally got through her joking and she looked up at him with a little frown.

Ruby was tall, especially in her heels, but he still towered over her. He looked, not hurt but…pained.

“It’s important to me, Ruby. Don’t even joke.”

“Uh, okay, sure. Sorry.”

“It’s alright.”

“And the return of the frowny face!” Ruby brightened her tone again and looped her arms through one of his. “Come on, Emmet, cheer up! Just think, I’m going to dress you up so pretty!”

Emmet groaned and Ruby just laughed at him. She could see the beginnings of a smile hovering around his mouth. He was glad of the distraction and Ruby was happy to provide it.

This morning had gone better than she had expected. She had been really surprised that Emmet had opened up to her even that tiny bit about the jacket. Ruby had been under the impression that Emma had just been a creature of practicality. Why buy a new jacket if the one she had was still in one piece?

But that apparently wasn’t the case at all. The jacket had some other meaning and Ruby was honoured that he’d even told her that much.

She ached for him a little bit. Emma had been burdened with so much responsibility as it was; being the Saviour, having famous parents, dealing with Regina on a daily basis, having a son and –now- some magical whammy that had turned her into a guy.

Ruby didn’t think he even realised that he didn’t have any friends.

He was too busy trying to do the right thing all the time that it never even occurred to him that he needed people to lean on too. It hadn’t even occurred to him to ask. He’d just gone off on his own to try and wrap his head around it himself. It hurt Ruby to realise that he didn’t ask for help because it hadn’t been there for so long that he was used to just taking care of himself. No one else had ever been there to do it for him.

Well, not anymore.

Ruby was serious about the godmother thing. She didn’t think Snow and Charming could help, they were reeling over this too much themselves to be much use, which left Ruby.

And Ruby wasn’t about to let him down.

 

**_Later…_ **

 

“Quadruple shot please.”

Granny turned at the familiar voice and stilled when she caught sight of the queen.

Regina leaned heavily on the bar, her face pale behind her huge dark sunglasses, and she had hangover written all over her.

 “Coming right up.” Granny turned back to the coffee machine without further comment and set about making the tar thick coffee that Regina favoured. She handed it over to her quick time and waited for Regina to painstakingly rummage in her handbag for her purse.

“I can put it on your tab.”

“Oh, thank god, I don’t think I can count anymore.” Regina said nothing more and took her coffee, disappearing off towards a booth at the back of the diner.

Granny frowned, glanced over at Randy –who nodded to her silent question- and stepped out from behind the bar to follow after Regina. She sat down opposite her in the booth without asking for a permission that wouldn’t have been given anyway and ignored Regina’s low and half-hearted growl at the intrusion.

“Glad to see you’ve been giving it your all to turn Emmet back.”

“It’s none of your business.” Regina clutched her coffee cup in one hand and shook the straps of her handbag and the shopping bag she carried from her arm.

“I’m worried about him. He looked only a little better than you do when he came in earlier.”

“Only a little better how?” Regina tilted her head so that her sunglasses slid down her nose and her bloodshot eyes could meat Granny’s. “Has he been ill? You can smell disease, can you not? Can you also smell malnutrition?”

“No.” Granny frowned and then elaborated. “He seems physically fine.”

“Oh,” Regina relaxed and pushed her sunglasses back up her nose, she savoured a sip of coffee, “I don’t care about mental anguish.”

“Evidently.”

“He wants me to turn him back. I said I’d help. Anything else is neither worth my time nor any of my business.” Regina wrapped both hands around her coffee cup and gratefully inhaled the rich scent of it. “He has all of his friends’ shoulders to soak with his weeping, I think we’ll all be a lot more comfortable with me being the practical one.”

“Girl, when you’re practical, people end up dying.”

“You’re no slouch in that department yourself, old wolf.” Regina smiled tightly.

Granny’s jaw rocked to the side but she didn’t gainsay it.

“Be that as it may, you’d better not be behind this.”

“Or you’ll what?” Regina tilted her head. She really wasn’t up to this kind of sparring. “Kill me? Don’t tease me. Far stronger than you have tried and failed.”

“Maybe but not all of them would be willing to kill you from five hundred yards without need for glory or applause.”

“Ah, death threats, I was beginning to miss them.” Regina smiled into her coffee cup and drank deeply. “I’m not afraid of you, old woman. I never have been and I never will be. If you’re going to kill me, you’d best do it before this hangover and conversation do it for you.”

“You smell of brimstone.” Granny didn’t let the queen’s complete apathy at a perfectly valid threat against her safety rattle her.

Well, she tried not to let it rattle her.

“I knew there was something off about that soap.” Regina gave nothing away.

Or so she thought.

“The demon you summoned, to help with the boy, it went wrong.”

“Depends on your point of view.” Regina offered a scant smile. “Don’t you have tables to be waiting?”

“They’ll keep. This is important.”

“I had no idea that you’d taken the Saviour in as one of your pups.” Regina smiled and it was not at all pleasant. The carefree laughter of the day before was gone, a brief reprieve in the face of whatever weight it was that Regina lived her life under.

Had Granny not seen it, she’d have never known the difference, but now…

“They’re all my pups. All of them save you and the Dark One.”

“Oh, what it is to be special.” Regina hunched her shoulders and wrinkled her nose in false pleasure.

Granny looked at her for a long moment and hesitated before deciding that she lost nothing by at least trying.

“Maybe you should keep up with those sessions with Hopper.”

“The cricket?” Regina slanted a look at her over the top of her sunglasses and Granny saw that her eyes were no longer bloodshot.

The advantages of a magical immune system.

“Aye, he helped, didn’t he?”

“No.” Regina set her cup down. “He didn’t.”

“You seemed to get better when you were going to him.”

“He told me to be half of what I am and half of anything isn’t very threatening at all.” Regina snapped. “ _That_ appeared to be better to you but not to me. I am magic, through and through, and denying that will kill me. If Henry cannot love me for being me then…”

Regina cut herself off sharply and took another drink of coffee.

“Then what?” Granny pushed gently.

“Then I don’t know!” Regina’s voice was low and furious and she shook it off quickly. “Table four needs served.”

Granny looked at her for a long moment and then nodded shortly. She stood, her hand resting on the table for a moment and then looked away. She spoke without looking at the queen.

“It might be an idea to stop whipping yourself. There’s only so much a body can take, after all.”

“Concern? For me?” Regina snorted and looked out the window. “How sentimental.” Granny’s words knocked the smile from her mouth and stilled the coffee cup halfway to her lips.

“Not for you. The boy loves you and any hurt dealt to you soon comes back to him. Think about that the next time you want to wallow in self-pity.”

“I’ll remember your words, Widow Lucas.” Regina let Granny decide if that was a threat or not and studiously remained fixated on her coffee until the old woman left.

Regina huffed a low breath and stared into her coffee.

“I should have taken this to go.”

 

**_The Loft…_ **

 

Snow threw open the door and her face fell when she saw Regina.

“Oh. It’s you.”

“Contain your enthusiasm, Snow. People will talk.” Regina drawled and stepped into the loft when Snow moved out of her way to do so.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.” She waved Regina in. “I thought you might be Emmet.”

“Emmet wouldn’t knock.” Regina reminded her and Snow let out a measured breath through her nose.

“Yes. Well. I can hope.”

“Which answers my next two questions so I’ll move onto the third; when did he leave?”

“Before any of us got up. We don’t know where he is.” Snow shrugged helplessly.

“He was at the diner and he left with Ruby.” Regina dumped her purse and shopping onto the table and rolled her shoulder to stretch out the kinks at having been subjected to the weight. “I do believe they went shopping.”

Snow was cut off from asking how Regina knew that by a high speed Henry flying down the stairs and tackling Regina about the waist.

“Mom!” He latched both arms tight about her. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Regina frowned down at him a little but hugged him tightly to her for a moment. No one was more surprised than she when he didn’t immediately pull away. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Henry loosened his hold a little, “it’s just that Emmet wouldn’t say why you hadn’t come back with him and…I was worried. I thought you doing magic to try and fix him might have hurt you since it didn’t work.”

“Oh no, I’m fine, honey.” Regina smoothed his hair down and smiled. “I didn’t cast any spells on Emmet yesterday. We’re still trying to find out what happened to him. Until I do that, I won’t know how to turn him back.”

Regina spoke as much to Snow as she did Henry. She knew that Snow had to be worried sick about this unknown spell that had overtaken her child.

“It may take some time though. This is complex magic. I can switch my form at will but this is different from even that.” Regina spoke in a low and soothing tone, trying not to alarm either of them. Though that was more for Henry’s benefit. “I don’t know how this happened to him and –until I do- I cannot help him turn back. So…he could be this way for a while. Do you understand?”

Henry bit his lip and his face fell. He buried his face against her chest and hugged her tighter. Regina wrapped both arms around him and held him in return. She dropped a kiss on top of his head.

“He is still the same person on the inside, sweetheart. If spending the day with him yesterday taught me anything, it was that he can still be as interfering and annoying as Emmet as he had ever been as Emma.”

Henry managed a half-hearted chuckle at that.

“His body is only that, the parts of Emma that you love are still in there. She just looks very different now.”

“I’ll say.” Henry muttered and Regina chuckled, kissing his hair again.

“Good boy. So…try not to hold it against him, hmm? It’s not his fault.”

“Oh…kay.” Henry would try. If his mom said it was okay, and she would know if it was someone else _pretending_ to be Emma, then Emmet was probably on the level.

Henry realised he’d been holding pretty tightly to his mom for a while now and he loosened his hold reluctantly. It had felt good to hold onto her again. To have her hug him back and tell him that everything was going to be okay meant more to him than a hundred hugs from Emma…and Henry felt a little ashamed at that. He wanted suddenly for his mom not to go anywhere and thought furiously for an excuse for her to stay.

“You’re looking for Emmet?”

“I was going to call him but I seem to have misplaced my cell phone somewhere.” Regina nodded and decided not to add that she might have dropped it down the garbage disposal in her drunken stupor when the alarm just wouldn’t shut _up_ this morning.

“We have his number, if _you_ call him and leave a message then he might not ignore it.” Snow offered, her voice a little strained but Henry butted in before Regina could take her up on her offer.

“You can stay here and wait for him.” Henry gripped her hand. “We were about to have lunch, weren’t we grandma.” Henry looked wildly over at Snow.

“Uh, sure.” Snow was a little confused and a little envious at the understanding she saw dawn in Regina’s eyes.

“Well, then mom can stay with us until Emmet comes back.” Henry pulled at Regina, tugging her towards the couch. “You can watch cartoons with me, mom. Just to keep you from getting bored.”

Regina followed after him, her brows raised, in all honesty she had expected to be press ganged into cooking but it would seem it wasn’t a hearty meal he was after. She let herself be dragged down onto the couch and Henry tucked himself next to her and channel hopped until he found a suiting cartoon to ‘entertain’ her.

“Well…if you’re here, Regina, I guess I can go to the store. We need a couple of things.”

Regina looked up at her, a little nonplussed and nodded. She was heartened to realise that they _didn’t_ just leave Henry at the drop of a hat by himself.

“Henry, you have my number, call me if Emmet comes back, okay?”

“Okay.” Henry leaned closer into Regina’s side, as if to pin her to the couch when the front door opened and she might suddenly bolt out of it.

Snow took in the scene with no small streak of jealousy tearing through her at the sight. Henry had finally unclenched a bit. He’d been tense and twitchy since the night before and he’d only been able to sit still for two consecutive minutes with Regina there to keep him in place.

He was _her_ grandson and he could barely stand to be touched by her right now. He’d suffered through the cuddles she’d given him to comfort him but it was evident now that the gestures he’d made in return had been nothing but the right sounds to comfort Snow.

Snow managed something of a tight smile, said her goodbyes and headed off to find Charming.

She was going to the store, but she also needed someone to tell her everything was going to be fine and no one did that better than her husband.

Back inside the apartment, Regina watched as Henry lifted her arm and drew it over his shoulders. He hunkered down next to her on the couch and snuggled into her side. All of the tension seemed to bleed out of him at once and he sagged against her, paying absolutely no attention to the television at all.

“Oh, honey, they had no idea, did they?”

Henry sank lower against her and turned his face into her body so that it was buried against her stomach. He was still for a long moment and then shook his head in the negative.

“You’re scared, hmm?”

Another long moment of stillness before he dared a nod.

“I meant what I said, you know. It really is Emma under all the muscles and…manly things.”

“You’re not laughing anymore.” Henry’s voice was muffled against her blazer.

“True,” Regina nodded and stroked his hair, “but that’s not exactly unusual, is it?”

“That’s the sad part. I liked it when you laughed.” Henry wound his arms around her waist and rested his cheek against her front. “It wasn’t so scary when you thought it was funny.”

“Well, it was a little mean of me to laugh. Especially since Emmet might be stuck like this for the foreseeable.”

“How long is that?”

“That depends.”

“On what?” Henry lifted his tousled head to look up at her with big eyes that wanted nothing more than for her to say she would fix all of it with a snap of her fingers.

But she had long since given up lying to him.

“On lots of things. Like what happened to Emma to change her into Emmet, when it happened, who cast the spell…lots of things, Henry.” She cupped his face in her hand and smiled for him. “But I’m on the case and I’ll find out what happened and then I’ll undo it.”

“Really? Even if it means bringing Emma back?”

“Emma’s still here.” Regina pushed him upright so she could easier look him in the eye. “Look at me, Henry.”

Henry’s mouth twisted but he looked into her eyes.

“Emma and Emmet are the same person. On the inside, nothing has changed. Well, there are some hormonal…never mind. Emma is still Emma even though you call him Emmet now. You know how people sometimes have surgery to change genders?”

Henry warily nodded.

“It’s exactly the same thing. They’re still the same it’s just that their outside has changed. Not the inside.”

Henry bit his lip and the words seemed to blurt from him before he could stop them.

“You do it.”

“What?”

“You…can you do it? Change into a guy, I mean. Not permanently!” He clutched her arm suddenly, his eyes going wide. “Just…for a minute. Just to show me.”

Regina looked at him for a long moment and frowned. She heaved out a sigh and her mouth twisted to the side. She held up a single warning finger.

“Just this once.”

Henry nodded hurriedly and Regina levered herself from the couch and, after a moment’s hesitation, kicked off her shoes. She sucked in a deep breath, closed her eyes, waved her hand and summoned her magic.

Purple smoke engulfed her, the magic pouring over her from the top down, warping her bones, shifting the meat of her body, rearranging her organs and anatomy.

When Regina opened her eyes, she was considerably taller than she was used to.  She blinked, taking in her surroundings and then looked down at Henry who stared at her like she had grown another head.

Regina…well, Regin now, brushed off his shoulders to double check that had not been the case and then grinned at his son.

“See? Still me.”

Henry’s eyes were so wide all around Regin thought they were going to fall out.

“Do you want me to turn back?”

“No.” Henry squeaked and then cleared his throat forcibly and continued in a more even tone. “No. Not yet.”

“Do you want to have a closer look?” Regin tilted his head with that lopsided smirk his mom had and Henry let loose a slow sigh of relief.

She really was still in there.

“Yeah.” Henry bounced up onto his feet on the couch and watched his mom –er- dad approach.

Regin was considerably bigger than Regina. He stood taller than she had even in her heels. His shoulders were broad and his waist narrow and Regina had warped the clothes along with her flesh so that he wore a tailored business suit. His eyes were the same mahogany black shade as was his hair though it was cut short and styled neatly like something Henry had seen in a Twenties gangster movie.

Henry could clearly see the resemblance between this man and the tiny woman his mother was, they even shared the same scar on his top lip.

Even with Henry standing on the couch, Regin had to bend a little to be at eye level with Henry.

“Okay?”

“Okay.” Henry studied every piece of Regin’s face minutely and then reached out carefully, poking him in the nose.

Regin wrinkled his nose and huffed out a breath but otherwise didn’t react.

“Sorry.” Henry snatched his hand back and nearly toppled over when he tried to step back too.

“Easy.” Regin gripped the boy by the arms to steady him and took his tiny hand, lifting it to his face. “It’s alright.”

Henry, emboldened by his…parent’s lack of reaction went back to examining Regin’s face.

“Your nose is different.” Henry ran his finger down the bridge of said feature.

“My normal nose wouldn’t work on this face.” Regin rumbled, his voice was very deep.

“Your mouth is kind of the same shape though.” Henry studied it carefully and then reached up to carefully touch Regin’s ears like they might just snap off. “Your ears are bigger.”

“Everything is bigger.” Regin chuckled and Henry giggled too.

“I hope I have a chin like this when I grow up.” Henry murmured and Regin laughed again. “It feels rough.”

“Stubble for authenticity.” Regin bobbed his eyebrows and had Henry laughing again.

A laugh that died a quick death when the front door swung open and Emmet strode into the apartment, laden with shopping bags.

“Who the hell are you?!” He frowned at the apparent intruder and dropped the bags.

“Emmet, who are you talking to-ooh! Well, hell- _OH_!” Ruby swung around the side of Emmet and hauled her sunglasses off her face to more appreciate the male specimen before her. “Good grief, the place is just crawling with them isn’t it?”

Regin smirked and dropped his hands into his pockets, not missing the way Ruby’s glance dropped to his belt buckle and a bit lower to measure the movement.

“You haven’t answered my question.” Emmet demanded, stepping dangerously closer and Regin just snorted.

“Really? Alright.” He stepped forward and extended his hand to Ruby, grinning wolfishly and bending to press a kiss to her knuckles. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Dinner first and then I can definitely be talked around.” Ruby nodded.

“Rubes!”

“What?!” Ruby looked up at him askance.

“And you, sir.” Regin held out his hand to Emmet and was summarily ignored.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Regin Mills.” Regin executed a neat bow with his hand over his heart. “At your service.”

“Reg…” Ruby’s nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply and then she growled. “Oh, typical! If they’re not related, they’re gay and if they’re neither of them then they’re evil incarnate.” She threw up her hands and spun away to storm into the kitchen and start making some coffee.

Regin smirked and watched the light dawn in Emmet’s eyes.

“Regina?!”

“Ah, caught.” Regin grinned and summoned his magic. It bloomed over him and receded revealing Regina standing in his place, in her feminine pant suit once more.

“That’s just _mean._ ” Ruby grumbled from the kitchen, fiddling with the coffee machine.

“Apologies, Miss Lucas, had I known how pleasantly you’d have taken to me, I might have kept the ruse a little longer.” Regina turned away and folded herself neatly down onto the couch, ignoring Ruby’s wide eyed look.

“Did she just say she’d hook up with me?” Ruby asked Emmet in a furious whisper and Emmet scowled at her.

“Really?”

“You’re not the only one that deals with post transformation hormone jangles, okay?” Ruby hunched her shoulders and carried on fidgeting with the coffee machine. Honestly, would it kill Snow to upgrade? This thing was practically run with a hamster in a wheel.

“But…never mind.” Emmet waved it off and turned back to stride around the couch and look down at Regina.

Henry dropped down from standing on the couch and scooted close to her.

Emmet drew up short when the pain of that knifed at him and Regina elbowed Henry. The boy squirmed a moment and then looked carefully up at Emmet.

“Hi…Emmet.”

Emmet smiled.

“Hey, kid.”

Henry looked studiously at the television and Emmet let loose a sigh. He turned his attention on Regina instead.

“And what was that in aid of? Rubbing my nose in it?”

“Not everything is about you.” Regina smiled up at him and Emmet opened his mouth a frown on his face, before Ruby butted in.

“Just a thought,” she removed the top of the coffee machine, her eyes flying wide and then cramming the lid back on, “probably best not to alienate the best chance of turning you back, huh? Juice?”

“Fridge.” Emmet growled and glared down at Regina. “Why the switch then?”

“I was proving a point.”

“What? That anything I can do, you can do and then you can undo it?”

Regina shrugged a shoulder and Emmet spun away before he started throwing things.

“Emmet, go and have a shower and then get changed into something that we just bought.” Ruby ordered from the kitchen and Emmet glared at her. Her tone hardened. “I mean it. You stink. Go and get changed.”

Emmet’s jaw clenched and he considered refusing but realised it would be just out of spite. He scooped up his bags and clattered up the stairs. Ruby watched him go and drank her juice. She ambled over to where Regina and Henry sat, handing them a glass of juice each, and then dropped down into the armchair opposite them.

“So…whose benefit was that for?”

“Mine.” Henry answered before Regina could. “Mom said Emmet was still Emma on the inside and I asked her to show me. She turned into a guy and it was still her. Inside.” Henry hunched his shoulders, unable to explain it any better than that.

“Why not just say that?” Ruby lifted a hand and then let it slap down on the arm of the chair. “Why antagonise him?”

“I owe him no explanations.” Regina shrugged, sipping of her juice. She grimaced. Orange.

“But there was no need to pick a fight with him.” Ruby kept going.

“Was that a fight? I hardly noticed.”

“God, he’d like you if you’d give them the chance you know.”

“Oh, and all my dreams would be fulfilled.” Regina drawled. “He would never have believed that it wasn’t about him anyway. The world revolves around the Saviour, remember?”

“Emmet’s a living lie detector, he’d have believed you!” Ruby thrust her hand at the stairs that Emmet had disappeared up.

“Emma didn’t believe me when I said I loved Henry. Obviously, such a ‘superpower’ has no effect on me.” Regina bit out and Ruby sat back against her chair. “And, in answer to your earlier question, yes.”

Ruby frowned when Regina didn’t elaborate further and looped her arm over Henry’s shoulders instead. Her eyebrows rose when she caught on.

“Oh.”

“You needn’t look so alarmed.” Regina sucked an ice cube from her drink and her cheeks hollowed as she melted it on her tongue. “I’m good at such things.”

“ _Oh._ ” Ruby clutched her glass and decided on whether or not she should be flattered or alarmed.

Maybe a little of both?

“Good at what things, mom?” Henry looked up at her.

“Magic.” Regina supplied flawlessly.

“Oh, well, obviously.” Henry snorted and turned his attention back to his cartoons.

Regina shot a sly grin at Ruby and then turned to watch the cartoons too when Ruby nearly choked on her juice.

“So, uh, speaking of,” Ruby stammered for a change of subject, “Emmet said you were working on a spell to help him?”

“True.” Regina sipped more of her juice. She really needed to rehydrate, despite the flavour.

Ruby huffed out a breath through her nose when she realised Regina had answered her question and saw no need to elaborate.

“Did you manage to do it?”

“Yes.” Regina appeared to be almost completely absorbed in the way Bugs was humiliating Daffy yet again.

“What kind of spell is it?”

 _That_ succeeded in drawing Regina’s attention from the television to the werewolf. Ruby shifted uncomfortably when Regina’s dark eyes glittered and she looked her over from head to toe. She tilted her head and arched a brow.

“And how much magic do you know of that you might hold your own in that conversation?”

“Is it another demon summoning?”

Regina shut down from the playful barbs in an instant, Ruby practically saw the walls slam down behind her eyes, and she turned back to the television.

“I might have known that he would _share_ such an experience. Still his mother’s daughter it would seem.” Regina’s voice was low and soft but veiled with contempt.

Henry glanced up at the tension that suddenly roped through her but didn’t say anything.

“Uh, no, actually.” Ruby frowned, coming to her godson’s defence. “Emma was a pretty closed off person and so is Emmet. Granny heard you mention demon summoning yesterday. Emmet won’t say anything about it, if you must know.”

Regina blinked at the cartoons, seemingly confused more than anything else, and then slowly relaxed a little.

“Interesting.”

“So, no more demons?” Ruby wouldn’t let up but almost wished she had when something flickered deep in Regina’s gaze. A flush of pain and sorrow rolled through her scent and Ruby frowned.

“No.” Regina spoke quietly. “No more demons.”

“Is it dangerous?” Henry rolled onto his back, his head resting on Regina’s lap.

“No. This one isn’t dangerous.”

“Can I watch?”

Regina looked down at him with an arched brow.

“You said it wasn’t dangerous.” He reminded her quickly. “And I never get to see you do magic.”

“You hate me doing magic.”

“No. I hated it when it made you evil. This is good stuff. I wanna see the good stuff.”

Regina frowned a little.

“I’m up for being in the audience too.” Ruby piped up and Regina turned to regard her with the same confusion. “I’ve never seen you do magic that wasn’t trying to take my head off. Might be interesting to actually observe rather than react.”

“And to make sure I don’t do something heinous too, hmm?” Regina’s smile was tight and she turned back to stare at the television. “Your grandmother has already had her terminal words with me this morning. You needn’t bother with further threats.”

“It wasn’t a threat.” Ruby blinked, confused. “I want to see. You know, despite being surrounded by it and _being_ it, I’ve never actually seen magic up close unless it was trying to roast me alive courtesy of yourself…Granny threatened you?”

“Like you didn’t know.” Regina snorted. “Though today was the first time I’ve not had a ‘motivational’ quote on my coffee cup since the curse broke. She does so specialise in the personal touch.”

“What’s Granny trying to motivate you to do?” Henry frowned, aware that he was missing something in the conversation.

“To stay alive.” Regina drained her glass of juice and leaned forward to set it onto the coffee table. “She likes to let me know my behaviour is being monitored.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Regina twisted to see Emmet padding down the rest of the stairs into the living area. He was dressed in a dark pair of jeans and a pale blue tee shirt that brought out his eyes. They suited and fitted him a lot better than his father’s clothes. He scraped his fingers back through his damp hair and tied it back into a tail.

He wasn’t cutting it, Ruby had suggested it, but Emma didn’t suit short hair and he was going to be turned back into a she at the first opportunity. He was _keeping_ his hair. Besides, he was apparently one of the few guys that could carry off long hair without looking effeminate or stupid.

Regina’s thoughts ran along similar lines as she appreciated the colour. Darker than it had been, more caramel coloured streaks through the gold, but still soft and long.

Regina frowned at that errant thought and shook it away.

“Why would I say anything?”

“Because you’re being threatened?” Emmet frowned right back at her.

“Why’s Granny threatening you?!” Henry bolted upright. “You’re good now!”

“I am not tame, Henry.” Regina smirked at Henry, trying to diffuse the situation. “Granny knows this and it’s not in her to sit idly by. Even if she can’t turn into a giant wolf and eat me anymore.”

“Nobody should be threatening you, Regina.” Emmet reaffirmed and Regina just snorted at him. “It’s not fair.”

“Yes, well, when I curse us all again and move us to a world that’s _fair_ I’ll let you know.” Regina inhaled deeply and tried to steer the conversation to a more comfortably topic. “Now…”

“Ruby, I want you to have a word with Granny. I don’t like this.” Emmet spoke to Ruby and she blinked up at him.

“Uh…”

“We can keep it in the family. For now.” Emmet glanced at Regina. “But it’s not on. I won’t stand for it.”

Regina chuckled and then sobered when he just looked down at her.

“You’re serious.”

“Of course.” Emmet frowned at her in confusion. “It’s a serious matter. I don’t take death threats lightly and neither should you. The last thing I need is some nut job thinking it’s okay to try some sort of vigilante justice bullsh- -stuff.” Emmet changed his mind when he remembered Henry was in the room.

“Ah.” Regina nodded her head as if things suddenly made sense and Ruby spoke carefully.

“You want _me_ to tell Granny what to do?”

“I want you to tell her from me before I have to make it official.” Emmet sank down onto the free armchair and stretched his long legs out in front of him.

“And what do you think you’re going to do if she refuses? Officially.” Regina tilted her head and looked amused.

“I’ll arrest her and bring her up on charges.” Emmet shrugged.

“You? _You_ will arrest the Iron Wolf?” Regina chuckled. “Good luck.”  

“The who-now?” Ruby sat forward.

“The Iron…she never told you?” Regina arched a brow and then shook her head. “Nothing.”

“No, that was definitely something.” Ruby waved a finger at her. “Who’s the Iron Wolf?”

“That is not my story to tell.” Regina shook her head.

“The Iron Wolf was Granny’s codename.” Henry spoke from his vantage point of his head on Regina’s lap again. He had calmed now that Emmet was going to warn Granny off. “She was a spy during the war between the White Army and King George’s Army. The Book said that the Iron Wolf killed more people than even…” Henry trailed off and looked up at Regina.

“Than even me.” Regina said softly and gently moved Henry’s head from her lap. She rose to her feet and dusted off her pants.

“Mom…” Henry sat up but Regina spoke quickly before he could say anything more.

She didn’t want her son to remind her of all he knew. Just a fraction of her sins and he had been horrified. He had _no_ idea how many people she had actually killed. How many she had enslaved with their torn out hearts. She was dripping with red and forever would be. She had no desire for him to ever know the whole of it.

The way he looked at her now was heartbreaking enough.

“You wanted the spell.” She spoke to Emmet. “I can do it now.”

“Here?” Emmet straightened a little in his seat.

“Unless you’d rather wait?” Regina tilted her head impatiently.

“No! Nope, I’m good now.” Emmet bounded out of his seat so quickly that he nearly tripped over his own feet and Regina righted him with a judicious thump of her hand on his chest.

“Sit.” She waved at the stools by the breakfast bar and one of them scraped out from under it at her unspoken command.

Emmet practically leapt into the chair and waited eagerly for whatever it was she was about to do. She hadn’t asked him to take off his clothes, so he was going to take that as a win. He doubted she would do so with Henry and Ruby in the room.

He hoped.

Still, she seemed to be in the habit of removing her clothes before magic. She shrugged from her blazer, flopping it over the back of the couch, and rolled back her shirt sleeves. She even removed her watch and laid it onto the counter.

“What is it?”

“It’s a chronicling spell.” Regina lifted her shopping bag from the floor and began to empty it out onto the counter.

Glass beakers that she had brought from her vault, a camp stove, bottled water, some bottles of odd shapes but without labels, a pestle and mortar, some eye droppers, a packet of Q-tips, salt, a wickedly sharp kitchen knife, a little chopping board and many more things beside.

Regina reached deeper and deeper into the bag until her entire arm and shoulder disappeared into the depths of the bag that really shouldn’t hold that much.

She hummed with annoyance when she couldn’t find what she was looking for. She dumped the bag on another stool, opened it wide, and appeared to dive headlong into it.

Emmet’s brows made a dash for his hairline and Henry laughed in delight when Regina’s head, shoulders and entire torso disappeared into the bag all the way to her hips, her feet lifted off the floor and there was a sound like clunking and clattering coming from within the bag. Something crashed, like something very large falling over and Regina cursed softly.

“Ah-hah!” Regina’s feet kicked and she squirmed backwards out of the bag. She shook herself to right her clothes when she emerged once more and smoothed her hair down.

She carefully set a jar of what looked to be tiny cakes down on the breakfast bar and huffed out a breath. She looked a little green, obviously her hangover hadn’t appreciated being hung upside down.   

Emmet watched everything that transpired like he might be quizzed at a later date and Regina arched a brow but said nothing. If this was going to go the way she thought it was going to go, he’d need that rapt attention span.

“What’s a chronicling spell?”

Regina glanced over to Henry and then did a double take when she saw both Henry and Ruby sitting on the couch, elbows propped on the back of it and their chins caught in their hands. They both watched her intently.

“It’s…a way of reading the magic in a person. Like cutting a tree down and reading the rings.”

“Are you going to cut Emmet in half?! Like a magician?!” Henry nearly hurled himself over the back of the couch in his excitement, a huge grin on his face. “Cool!”

“No!” Emmet nearly squeaked. “Not cool. Your mom’s not doing that…right?”

“Alas, I left my saw at home.” Regina drawled at him, continuing to set up her equipment in neat little rows. “No, I shan’t be cutting anyone in half. Despite how much I may desire to.” The last was spoken so softly that only Emmet clearly heard her.

He scowled at her.

“So, this is to go back through all the magic that Emmet’s ever come in contact with?” Ruby questioned tentatively.

“Precisely.” Regina nodded and lit the little gas stove. She set a beaker over it and filled it halfway with water from the bottle. She went to the freezer to store it next to the Tupperware boxes of leftover casserole and pot roast. Honestly, was it that difficult to cook for as many as you were feeding? “My first contact told me that nothing has been done to Emmet since…something. So I need to know what the something is. This will help with that.”

“And once you know that?”

“Well…it shall be some time before I know that. The spell may take weeks to mature.”

“Weeks?!” Emmet blurted, unable to help himself.

“Just yesterday you offered to stay this way so long as I did not speak to the demon. Now weeks are unacceptable?” Regina lifted the mortar and pestle and opened the jar of tiny cakes. She shaved off a slice and dropped it into the marble bowl.

“You did a lot more than talk to him and _that_ is what I wanted to stop.” Emmet glared at her and glanced over at their audience when Ruby made a small sound in the back of her throat. He had no idea what it meant.

“Suffice to say, this spell needs time to mature. I can’t just rip out all the information, that way lies distortion. It has to grow by itself and _then_ it will tell us all we need to know.”

Regina lifted another bottle of water and sloshed some into a beaker. She lifted one of the other bottles and dripped some of the chemical into the solution. A dash of salt and a dropper of another chemical and she mixed it all together with a glass rod.

“It looks really sciency.” Henry declared and Regina glanced over at him.

“I suppose it does.” Regina turned back to her spell.

“Whatchya making?” Henry prompted her. He thought she should be telling them what she was doing. Like some sort of cooking show.

“Saliva.” Regina murmured.

“Gross!” Henry wrinkled his nose but looked delighted. “Why?”

“I need it in order to activate the enlargement spell.”

“Why not just spit in the cup?”

“Well, for a start, that’s disgusting and –secondly- any of my magic going into the active ingredients of the spell will skew the results. This needs to only come into contact with Emmet’s magic.” Regina began to crush the sliver of cake within the mortar. She worked with delicate and methodical movements and was pleased when Emmet watched with that same rapt attention.

Perhaps he would not be an _awful_ student.

“Your spit’s magic?” Henry prompted again when Regina fell into silence once more.

“Henry, _all_ of me is magic.” Regina lifted the solution of ‘saliva’ and poured a careful amount into the bowl. She spent a few more moments crushing it until she was satisfied and gave a short nod to herself.

“So…when you said you weren’t going to do it anymore…didn’t that hurt?”

Regina turned, frozen in the act of opening the Q-tips packet, and blinked at him. Her gaze dropped to the plastic packet in her hands and then she tore it open with a disproportionate violence.

“No. Of course not.” Regina turned back to Emmet and then reached down with both hands and parted his knees so she could step between his legs.

Emmet ignored the way he could see Ruby smirking out of the corner of his eye.

“Open your mouth.” Regina commanded him and Emmet dropped his mouth open and stuck out his tongue at her.

Regina arched a brow, obviously resisting the urge to stab the cotton bud into the back of his throat just out of sheer meanness, but she restricted herself to doing what she had come to do. She stuck the Q-tip into his mouth and dragged it over the inside of his cheek. Once she was satisfied, she drew back a little and looped both arms around his neck. Emmet stiffened when he had to bend so she could reach around him and his face was very close to her neck. He felt her pull the tie free of his hair with one hand and she tunnelled the fingers of her other hand into his hair.

Emmet blinked and jerked a little but didn’t pull away. Regina did it several times, reaching under the heavy mass of his hair and spearing her fingers through it before combing it out to its full length.

Emmet glanced at Ruby and saw her smirking at him. He glared and turned his attention back to what Regina was doing.

“What you looking for, mom?”

“Hair.” Regina answered absently and held the hand she had been combing Emmet’s hair with up to the light. Her eyes narrowed and she smirked. “More specifically, the root of a hair.”

Regina plucked the desired hair from the tangled strands on her fingers and carefully wound it around the cotton bud that had just been in Emmet’s mouth.

“Your hand.” Regina turned back to Emmet and held out her own free hand.

Emmet had an inkling of where this was going but he held out his large hand palm up and winced when she stabbed him suddenly with a pin he hadn’t even seen her pick up. She dabbed the hair wrapped cotton bud into the bead of blood and nodded sharply to herself.

“Good.” She set the cotton but carefully aside and then peeled the waxed paper backing off a plaster.

Emmet watched with bemusement when she bent to the task of sealing the wound on his hand with a plaster and then turned back to her spell like nothing so tender had occurred.

“What now?” Ruby decided it was her turn to heckle.

“Well, now we hope that there are no dust mites on the floor.” Regina turned back to her audience and measured the distance between the couch and where she stood. Hmm, should be large enough.

“Dust mites?” Emmet looked a little alarmed. He’d seen pictures of those things and he had no desire to see what Regina’s magic might do to them.

“Hmm, nobody move.” Regina set the cotton bud carefully on the floor and then filled a dropper from the beaker of her saliva solution. She dripped it over the business end of the Q-tip and then turned to pick up a smaller bottle with a skull and crossbones on the front of it.

“I’m not drinking that.” Emmet said quickly and she shot him a look.

“Glad to hear it. I have no desire to try and repair the caustic burning of your oesophagus. Believe me, acid burns are a lot worse than fire.” Regina sank down onto her heels beside the Q-tip and let out a preparatory breath. Lifting the dropper, she let a droplet of acid fall onto the cotton bud and then she shot suddenly backwards out of the way.

Emmet was confused at such a skittish action from her but then he realised why when the Q-tip was suddenly growing.

His brows rose when it grew and grew and grew. Not just the cotton bud either, but the hair, the skin and the blood on it too.

Emmet gaped when the Q-tip was suddenly ten feet long, the snake of his strand of hair as thick around as his wrist, the white root of it hanging wet and pulpy looking, the red blood cells like spongey saucers spotted over the woollen thickness of the cotton bud strands and the squamous cells of the skin she had taken from the inside of his cheek were splattered over the cotton bud tip like beached jellyfish.

“Gross!” Henry laughed.

“Perfect.” Regina disagreed and moved to the giant Q-tip. She peeled off one of each giant cell and sliced away a portion of the hair root.

Then, with a flick of her fingers and a sudden burst of flame, she immolated the entire cotton bud. There was a bright flash of light and an instant of searing heat but then nothing was left save a thin filtering grey dust that wafted to the floor in the vague shape of a giant cotton bud.

“It is best not to leave that kind of thing lying around.” Regina said by way of explanation and slapped the doughnut shaped red blood cell onto the chopping board. Picking up her knife, she moved to expertly mincing it into tiny chunks.

Emmet watched her do it and didn’t know how to feel about that. All he could think of was…eew.

Regina turned off the heat under the beaker on the camp stove once she had finished mincing every bit of oversized Emmet scrapings she had collected into the beaker of warm water. She added another slosh of some miscellaneous chemical and mixed them all together with another glass rod. She went to the freezer to retrieve the now chilled water, glancing at her watch and stilled when she saw Henry on his toes by the breakfast bar.

“Ah-ah!” She scruffed him by the back of his tee shirt and steered him around to the other side of the breakfast bar. “Touch. Nothing.”

“But…!”

“But nothing.” Regina levelled a finger at him. “No.”

Henry scowled but subsided when Ruby joined him on that side too.

“So, Chef Gina, what are we cooking up now?” Ruby spoke brightly to try and lighten the mood.

“DNA.” Regina sloshed cold water into the beaker of enlarged cell mush and chemical mess. “I need to separate it from the cells. Which should be easier now that…ah.”

Regina bent so that her hands rested on her knees and she was eye level with the beaker. She smirked.

“Beautiful.”

Regina picked up the beaker and swirled it around a little. She studied the mess inside, which was a rather stomach turning brown gloop, and then stuck her whole hand into it.

Henry giggled, he didn’t often see his mom get dirty. Even when she cooked she wore an apron, but she didn’t do that for magic. She was very hands on and he liked that. She enjoyed it. He could see that. She was so immersed in the spell she was making that she didn’t notice the splatters on her shirt or shoes.

Regina cupped the hot beaker in one hand by the base, swirling it in that same gentle motion, magic shimmering between her fingers. Her other hand dug into the mixture inside, clawing her fingers and letting it run through them as if she was trying to strain something.

It started slowly, so slowly that Henry wasn’t sure what he was seeing to begin with, but then it became clearer the longer his mom kept at it. She kept grasping into the mucky mushy stuff and pulling free diaphanous blue and gold strands. They seemed so bright in comparison to the rest of the brown stuff. She did it again and again and again until the strands were dripping from her fingers and there was only a dark and tar like gloop left in the beaker.

“Henry,” Regina spoke absently as she studied her handful of gossamer blue strings and gold sparks, “would you like to help?”

“Yeah!” Henry bounced on his toes in excitement.

“Carefully,” Regina’s firm tone calmed him considerably, “pick up that legal pad and open it to the back page for me.”

Henry eagerly did as he was bidden and flipped open the yellow paged book to the last page. He watched with rapt attention whilst Regina carefully plucked a strand free from the seething mass caught in the cage of her fingers. She wound it carefully away from the others, lifting it high and letting it spool in a gentle coiled down onto the page. The moisture glittering on the strands pooled onto the page in a shimmering blot of blue and gold.

Regina directed Henry to turn several pages backwards through the book, repeating the process over and over until all but one strand had been folded between the pages. The legal pad was now three times its original width, glimmers of blue and gold shimmering from between the yellow pages that rumpled with the gloop that had soaked into them.

“Very good, Henry.” Regina beamed at her son and carefully held the last strand.

“It’s so pretty, mom. What is it?”

“It’s Emmet’s DNA.” Regina held up the last strand and let it spool out to its full length. It stretched from where she held it over her head nearly to the floor. “Extracted with magic and held together with his. Quite fascinating really, I didn’t expect it to be so…ethereal.”

“That’s my DNA?” Emmet’s brows raised. “I thought it was a helix shape.”

“It is, see?” Regina stepped closer, spooling the strand between her hands and holding it up to Emmet. “Not a string, but a twisted ladder.”

“Cool.” Emmet murmured and lifted his hands to take the strand but then hesitated.

“No, you are to take it.” Regina waited until he was ready and then draped the DNA strand across his hands so he held it carefully.

Turning, Regina picked up the bulging book and turned back to him. She held it over the strand.

“Now, bind it.”

“Bind it?” Emmet looked at her uncertainly.

“As you would bind string around a parcel. It doesn’t really matter how, just so long as it is you that does it.”

Feeling a little relieved at that, Emmet carefully wound the string around the book a few times one way and then the other and then tied the ends together in a gentle knot. He blinked and shivered when the knot tightened and a strange sensation rocked through him.

“Congratulations. You just cast your first spell.”

“I…what?” Emmet frowned at her. “But I didn’t do anything!”

“You did. You sealed the spell so that it could work. With your DNA and your intent. Which is seemingly plenty. I’ll bet they felt that in the convent.”

“I didn’t mean to do magic.” Emmet defended himself.

“Well, it has been done, so I suggest you get over it.” Regina turned and set the bound book carefully onto the counter.

She rummaged into her bag again and pulled out a folded bolt of black cloth. She tore off a hank and gently wrapped the book up in the dark cloth. Magic was already bleaching wild colours into it and her brows rose.

He was quite potent indeed, it would seem.

“And you’ll need to do more of it in the coming days and weeks if you want this spell to be of any use to you.” Regina moved onto cleaning up the mess she had made with quick and efficient movements.

“What does that mean?”

“It _means_ ,” Regina turned to him as if explaining to a particularly dim child, “that I’m not the only one made of magic. You’re a sorcerer, Emmet. One of a particular power if I am not mistaken and that makes things all the more interesting.”

“I don’t want interesting, I want boring. I want plain and simple, _female,_ boring.” Emmet slashed his hand through the air as if to underscore it.

“Well, that doesn’t happen in Storybrooke so…deal.” Regina hunched a shoulder. “You’re going to have to learn if you want to turn back. I can’t do it for you, your magic would fight me at every turn and the resulting conflict would probably tear one or both of us apart which…I’m not really a fan of.”

“I can’t be a sorcerer I’m just…me!”

“Well ‘just you’ is a sorcerer.” Regina stuffed the last of her beakers into the bag with a clink. She was growing bored of this conversation. “I suggest you get a tutor. Someone who can show you how to control the power that’s coursing through you because –now that we’ve just awakened it- it’s going to start taking an interest in the world around it and you do _not_ want to be on the wrong side of that leash.”

“You speak as if it’s got a mind of its own.” Ruby noted mildly, not entirely sure how she felt about all this.

“Doesn’t your wolf?” Regina asked archly and moved to the sink to wash her hands.

“I…you.” Emmet spoke so softly that Regina thought she had been mistaken but then his voice strengthened. “You. You teach me.”

“Me?” Regina turned to him, drying her hands. “We can barely stand to be in the same room with one another.”

“Well, my alternatives are the Dark One or the faeries and neither of them really float my boat so you’re it.”

“I’m not ‘it’.” Regina snapped. “There’s more than those two opposites practicing in Storybrooke but if he hasn’t made himself known to you I suppose that’s not my place…no. Not interested. Bother someone else with your insignificant problems.”

“Insignificant!” Emmet surged to his feet and gripped Regina by the arm when she moved to pass him and pull her blazer on again. “I hardly call being turned into a guy and then finding out I’m made of sparkles and nonsense ‘insignificant’!”

“Then perhaps you should expand your vocabulary.” Regina wrenched her arm from his hold. “I have no desire to be leashed to the Saviour whilst he attempts to knuckle drag his way through the greatest art form that any world has ever seen. You’re an idiot, Swan. Your mind is closed and you’re too stubborn to _learn_. Not when you think you already know everything.”

“Well isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?!” Emmet snapped at her and resisted the urge to shake her until she rattled.

“Don’t be racist.” She straightened her blazer and ignored his sputtering. “Incidentally, I am under absolutely no delusions as to what I am; an insignificant speck of carbon in a universe that reaches far beyond the scope of any living mind. You can’t even see beyond your own body. How am I supposed to work with that?”

Regina turned away from his wordless growl and scooped up her things. She bent to drop a kiss on Henry’s forehead and stalked towards the door.

“Bye, sweetie, I’ll see you soon.” She waved to him from the door and took the handle in her free hand.

“ _Don’t_ walk away from me!” Emmet took a step after her and froze when something seemed to be yanked out from behind his sternum.

A flash of light washed from him and slammed into the door, rattling it in its frame and missing Regina so closely that her hair was ruffled by it. The door handle fell free from the door with a loose _clunk_ into her hand.

Regina looked down at the handle in her hand and –slowly- smiled. She tossed it up into the air, catching it again before it could fall.

“Lesson one complete.” Regina examined the door handle and then set it back to the door, sealing it there with a thrum of her own magic. “Meet me at the Manor tomorrow, eleven a.m., then we’ll see what you can _really_ do.”

Regina smirked at him one last time and then swung out of the door her heels echoing down the corridor outside.

Emmet frowned.

What the hell just happened?

“Well, congratulations,” Ruby drawled, “I do believe you just signed up to the Dark Side.”              


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yeah, I didn't plan on adding any more to this at all but...I've had a pretty shit week and wanted somebody to suffer and Emmet was just such a good target. 
> 
> Enjoy the insults, I guess?

**Chapter 6 – Curses, Hexes and Bad Juju, Monday to Friday, Nine to Five…**

**_The Manor…_ **

 

Regina was waiting for him when he pulled up to the Manor in her car the next day.

She opened the passenger side door before he could even turn off the engine and slid into the seat on that side.

“Drive.”

“You don’t want to…?” Emmet waved at the steering wheel and let himself be cut off again when she just glared at him.

“ _Drive._ ”

“Fine!” Emmet pulled out into the street again and waved at the road with one hand. “Any particular place you want…?”

“Just drive.”

“Fine.” Emmet clapped his other hand down onto the wheel and shifted in the driver’s seat.

It really was a very comfortable car. He could see why she was so attached to it. It was a classic but a testament to either Regina’s treatment of the car or the late lamented Billy’s skills as a mechanic that meant it ran smoothly still after twenty nine years.

“So…” Emmet fished for conversation after a few minutes of aimless driving. “What’s the plan?”

“Negotiations.” Regina watched the scenery pass by outside the window.

“Negotiations for what?” Emmet was immediately and wisely wary.

“My fee, Mister Swan. My fee. I don’t work for charity. My time is valuable and you’ll be taking up a great deal of it if you’re even half as dumb as I think you are. We’re going to discuss my compensation for such a trial and then we’ll go from there.”

“Well, you already write my paycheque so-o…”

“Don’t be so _dense_.” Regina flopped her head back against the headrest of her seat as if the day had been far too long for her already. “Money means nothing to me. I’ve no need of it and it is of no real value.”

“I disagree.” Emmet glared at her. “Money has plenty value for those of us that weren’t born with a silver spoon up our a--”

“You’re already starting these negotiations at a disadvantage. Do you really want to compound matters before we’ve barely even begun?” Regina turned to him and asked her question with a sweet smile.

Emmet’s jaw clenched and he blew out a breath.

“Alright, you think your time is more valuable than money which _does_ have value. If you didn’t want everybody’s lives to be defined by that you should have set up your cursed shop in China. Communism’s the in thing, so I hear.”

“Don’t be flippant. What I mean is –and this is _free_ advice- money can always be earned back. You can get another job, you can work more hours, another paycheque can be written. When dealing in magic, you are dealing in the thought and the soul. Now, neither of those things are finite by any stretch of any imagination, but they _are_ one of a kind and unique. They have a weight without form and a value without number. _Those_ are the currency in which we magicians and deal makers trade in.”

“So you want…what? My thoughts?”

“How on _earth_ have you ever been a threat to me?” Regina propped her elbow on the edge of the passenger door window and her head in her hand.

“I hid behind Henry and sicced Gold on you.” Emmet shrugged a shoulder.

“Remind me again why I’m helping you?”

“You’re not helping me, I’m hiring you. Apparently.”

“Attaboy.” Regina smirked. “Now, what can you offer me?”

Emmet’s mind went entirely blank.

“So far, I’m very impressed.” Regina drawled into the silence.

Emmet glared at her and then did a double take.

“What are you wearing?”

“Stall tactic. Poorly executed but I’ll allow it. Clothes.”

“You’re wearing jeans. I’ve never seen you in jeans. I didn’t know you owned any.”

“Spend a lot of time thinking about the contents of my wardrobe?”

“No.” Emmet huffed out a breath and tried to focus on the road rather than resist the urge to examine the fit of said jeans more closely.

It was normal, he told himself. Regina had flat out told him that the hormones of his new body were going to hit him like a god damn truck and she was exactly right. He’d always known that Regina was an attractive woman, had known it academically even before the switch, but he’d never seen her in dark blue jeans that she had to have been stitched into. Nor had he ever thought that she would suit wearing what looked to be a battered pair of walking boots. She’d finished off her startlingly casual look with a white scoop necked tee shirt and a blue blazer. She didn’t do casual well, it looked a little off on her, but she carried it off anyway.

“It’s different. I made my living noticing details before I came here.” Emmet shrugged. “Time.”

“Time?”

“That’s what I could give you.” Emmet glanced at her to try and read the faintly amused expression on her face.

He suspected the main reason he had been told to drive was to further put him at a disadvantage as to their negotiations. Difficult to get what you want when you can’t see if what you’re offering is something the opposition wants as well.

Enough of this shit.

Emmet pulled over at the side of the road and stopped the car. He turned to face her.

“You’re going to give me your time with something that’s important to you; magic.”

Regina blinked languidly at him.

“So,” Emmet continued doggedly, “I’ll give you time with something that’s important to me; Henry. You can have more time with Henry.”

“Well, that was a given.” Regina rocked her head to the side. “I shall be spending more time with you ergo, more time with Henry. You must have accepted that before you even drove over this morning.”

“So?”

“So try again.”

Emmet thumped back into his seat and stared out the windscreen. They were at the beach. Quite a ways out of town. Henry’s castle stood not far away. He could see it silhouetted against the two tone greys of sea and sky. He hunched his shoulders in a shrug.

“I’d owe you a favour?”

Regina sucked in a breath through her teeth and shook her head.

“What?” Emmet turned to glare at her. “ _What?!”_

“Seriously?” Regina laughed at him. “I was raised by a sociopath, sent to finishing school with the Dark One, learned most of my _really_ bad habits once I escaped out from under both of them and you want to give me an open ended favour?”

“I don’t know what you want!”

“You could try asking.” Regina shrugged.

“I could try punching you in the head too!”

“That is correct. You _might_ try that.” Regina flicked imaginary lint from the knee of her jeans. “Once.”

“What do you want?!”

“Loyalty.”

Emmet frowned.

“You swear to be _my_ apprentice. No running off to the Dark One or the Faeries when the going gets rough and it _will_ be rough. Magic is by no means easy. Do not make the mistake of thinking that it ever will be.”

“I already told you I didn’t want anyone else to teach me.” Emmet shrugged.

“Hmm. Yes. That was cute. Now I want you to _swear it_. Give your word on your own power that anything you learn from me will stay between you and I. This is the compact of master and apprentice. This is what you’re getting into.” She tapped her hand against her chest and then reached out to brush her fingers over his sternum.

She was caught a little off guard when he didn’t so much as hold his breath when her hand came so close to his heart.

Then again, he was immune to having his heart ripped out so why would he fear it?

Regina shook off why the question mattered.

She held up her hand when the big dumb brute sucked in a breath and opened his mouth to make such an oath on his own power without a second thought.

“We should also go over the rules before you agree to everything. You’re worthless to me unless you’re informed.”

Emmet clipped his mouth closed.

“Alright. First rule is that I’m exclusively yours. Your apprentice that is.” Emmet hurriedly tacked on when she arched a brow at him. “And the second rule that is the first one only extends to magic. You don’t have a say over the Sheriff’s department or anything else that does not pertain to magic in my life.”

Regina’s head rocked back and she smiled. _Now_ they were getting somewhere.

“You will work hard at this, Emmet. _Very_ hard. It will not be easy. It will at times even be painful. There will be days when you would rather do _anything_ rather than magic but you will _do it_ if I ask it of you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re very powerful.” Regina tilted her head. “And very powerful in this world you are walking into with me means very dangerous and magic is not something that you simply control it is something that you control or _it controls you_. So if you come to me to learn how to master it, master it you will. Do you understand?”

Emmet went up a notch in her estimations when he looked out of the window and then considered that a long moment. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his head as he struggled to wrap his brain around what she was telling him but he _was_ thinking about it and that was more than she had expected.

“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “It’s like…having a gun, I guess. You should only have it if you know you’re in control of it.”

“If that gun was almost sentient and gave serious thought to controlling you and/or inviting other such wild guns over into your head to try and control you if it couldn’t then…yes, it is very much like a gun.” Regina shrugged a shoulder and nodded.

“You make it sound like I’ve got an invisible great white shark swimming around me.” Emmet glared at her a little. He could do without the tactics.

“Emmet, from what I felt from you yesterday when you did that little binding ritual,” Regina looked him right in the eye to make sure he was paying attention, “you don’t have a Great White, you have a pod of Killer Whales. And they’re not _around you_.”

“They’re…not?” Emmet showed yet again he was smarter than she had expected (admittedly that wasn’t saying much) when he looked worried.

“No, dear. They’re _in you_. Now, would you like to build something they’d rather haunt than you?” Regina didn’t wait for his response and instead threw open the car door and stepped out into the grass verge at the side of the road.

Emmet scrambled out after her and followed her a ways down the road towards the ruins of what had been Henry’s castle before Regina had ordered it be destroyed.

Emmet blew out a breath as he tracked his gaze over the shrapnel and ruins and then out over the ocean. In actual fact, the bulldozers had come through here just over a year ago now but it felt like a whole lifetime had passed since then. Emmet’s life was _so_ different to what it had been (and not just because of the whole angle of the dangle thing he now had going) and a lot of that could be laid at the feet of the woman beside him.

Regina looked about herself with the detached kind of interest he had come to recognise as her neutral expression. Regina didn’t do ‘neutral’ but she could come close to it. Mild interest and the paranoia that she carried everywhere relegated to the back seat was about as good as it got with her but…no. That wasn’t right.

Emmet’s life wasn’t the only thing that had changed with the curse. He recognised well enough that he and Henry had effectively ruined Regina’s life with their meddling. First with Emmet taking over as primary parent, robbing her of the one thing that made her human as far as Emmet was aware, then the breaking of the curse, destroying her base of power and a great deal of security that she took from being the sole person in charge of the town and that was before he even got to the whole Greg, Tamara and the Diamond fiasco.

Regina had changed too.

“How typical of you to pick a derelict playground.” Regina drawled and Emmet’s mouth flattened into a tense line.

Alright, so she hadn’t changed that much.

“What do you mean?” Emmet folded his arms over his chest.

“I made you drive to see where you would go and you came _here_ of all places.” Regina waved about herself, looking supremely unimpressed. “I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me. You don’t typically feel that you can have new things.”

Emmet stiffened at that but she steamrollered over whatever he was about to say by conjuring a shovel. She slapped it against his chest hard enough to make him grunt.

“Go on, dig for victory.”

“What?” Emmet hefted the shovel and rubbed at his chest.

“This is it.” Regina flapped her hand to indicate the barren beach and ruined castle. “Your place of power. This is where your magic will anchor. It’s important to you but it’s not like we can set up shop aboveground. My vault does extend this far. Dig down far enough and you’ll find it. I’ll rent you a room as part of our agreement.”

Regina smirked at him and even managed to look magnanimous about the whole thing.

“Oh, you will, will you?”

“Did I not just say as much?” Regina heaved a sigh through her nose and muttered something that might have been about dumb blondes.

“Wait, your vault extends to _here_?” Emmet did some mental calculations. “That’s over three miles from…”

“I am aware of the distance. I am aware of _all_ of Storybrooke.” Regina continued in a bored tone. “I did build it, after all.”

“And what do you mean this is my ‘place of power’?” Emmet waved at the castle and the litter strewn stretch of wasteland beach. “Even I know this place is a dump.”

“Your low opinion of your own self-worth notwithstanding, you came here. Twice. With no prompting from me. This place –for whatever reason- is important to you. This is where your power will anchor. If we try to go elsewhere then it will always come back to here. I didn’t make up the rules, I just know them.”

“And break them.” Emmet reminded her and fidgeted with the shovel.

“Not this one.” She kicked her chin up to indicate a bare stretch of sand between the car and the castle. “Best to start digging, we’re wasting daylight.”

“How do you know I came here twice?” Emmet grumbled but decided to do as he was told. He did have a lot of muscle now, he supposed he might as well put it to use.

“Tyre tracks.” Regina hopped up onto a fallen beam from the castle and folded one leg over the other. “Two sets. From my car. It hasn’t rained since day before yesterday. Ergo, you were here in my car. Unless of course you decided to take your life into your hands and loaned it to someone.”

“No.” Emmet dug the shovel into the sandy earth and clomped his booted foot down on top of it to bite it further into the ground. “It was me. I was just wondering if you’d magically Lo-Jacked me or something.”

“A waste of time and resources. You’re fairly predictable.” Regina waved it off and canted her weight onto one hand.

“How deep do I have to dig?” Emmet hurled dirt from the small hole he had already excavated though he deliberately made sure it was in no danger of flying into her face.

Regina might have said she was willing to help him but he was intensely aware that her new role as her Master to his Apprentice had shifted the power stakes between them. He had no idea what she now viewed as acceptable abuses that she could weigh on him in the name of tutoring him and had little desire to find out until he had learned enough to maybe defend himself.

Shields, he decided as he dug deeper into the ground, he was going to get her to teach him shields first.

“You’ll know when it’s deep enough.” Regina examined her nails briefly and seemed entirely content to just let him work up a sweat.

Emmet growled under his breath but set himself to his task. It was going to be like this, he recognised. She was going to try and push all his buttons and wreak havoc in his life and steal as much time with Henry as she could and he would just have to try to learn something magic shaped from her in the meantime. As it was, digging a hole without the aid of a backhoe into some subterranean tunnels that may or may not hold all manner of magical mishaps just waiting to happen wasn’t that bad.

Oh no, bad was Rumplestiltskin turning up.

Emmet bodily flinched when the black shimmer of magic announced the presence of the imp, hefted his shovel and then changed his mind.

He went back to digging. Rumple had no interest in him. Let Regina deal with him.

Luckily, Regina had the same idea.

“Morning.” Regina arched a brow at Rumple when he ambled over to her side and leaned back against the beam. He propped his hands atop his cane and arched a brow as he studied Emmet.

Rumple snorted a laugh.

“Come to share in the amusement? News travels fast.” Regina studied him from beneath hooded lashes. She had no real inkling as to why he was here but petty amusement wasn’t out of the question. It hadn’t been for her, after all.

“Belle was asked about magical transformations and the reversal thereof.” Rumple shrugged a shoulder and continued to watch Emmet dig. His lips twitched into the shape of a smile. “A true shift?”

“Right down to the DNA.” Regina nodded.

Rumple inhaled deeply through his nose and nodded slowly. He considered for a long moment.

“He’s officially yours now then?”

“His choice.” Regina shrugged her shoulder. “I did offer him you but I’m much prettier.”

Rumple snorted but didn’t rise to the bait.

Things had… _settled_ between Regina and himself. He had considered briefly blaming her for Bae’s disappearance into the portal but she had then gone on to fry the offending parties before he could even ask it of her (she had always been better at energy based offensives). If Greg and Tamara were out there, if they were in the same place as Bae was then Regina had seen to it that Bae now had a decided advantage.

Regina did not _miss_ after all. Not where Henry was concerned in particular.

“You’ve never taken an apprentice before.” Rumple pointed out mildly and Regina shrugged. “It’s a big responsibility.”

“Gosh, I wonder what _that’s_ like.” Regina widened her eyes in mock horror.

“I’m saying that he’s not like us. He doesn’t have the –hmm- _motivations_ we do. Too many shades of grey. There is the mental component to consider.”

“Oh, I doubt there are very many moving parts up there.” Regina waved it away.

 As she had told Granny, she was not interested in mental anguish. It was irrelevant. If she could learn how to take over the known world with a shattered heart then the vaunted Saviour could learn how to rearrange some chromosomes whilst suffering some existential fluidity.

“Never underestimate the complexities of your student, dearie. I did you and it wound up costing me.” Rumple spoke mildly enough but there was a thread of a deep sorrow beneath his words. Regina looked at him sharply.

“I’m sorry about Bae.” Regina watched Rumple for a reaction. “Any luck in finding where he’s gone?”

“There are a thousand worlds close enough to ours that a portal can connect to. It could take me decades.” Rumple’s amber gaze tracked an arc of flying dirt as Emmet continued to dig as if his life depended on it.

“He’s a survivor.” Regina told him the only thing that would comfort him; the truth. “The boy has the magical signature of a brick and he’s over three hundred years old. You were meant to find him before and you’ll do it again.”

“Is that…faith? In little old me?” Rumple turned to look at her and Regina shook her head.

“ _Motivations_ , Rumple. Entire worlds are rearranged when the likes of us are motivated. You’ve committed atrocities to see your will be done in the past, I doubt the little wife has curbed your enthusiasm for it.” Regina watched Emmet and let Rumple digest that.

“You were my greatest atrocity.” Rumple spoke mildly but Regina’s head snapped around to look at him. “Not concerned I might pull the same trick twice?”

“I cut your puppet strings a long time ago, dear. I’ve outgrown you.”

“Evidently.” Rumple waved to Emmet. “Taking on fresh and impressionable apprentices and everything.”

Regina saw the threat for what it was and threw back her head and laughed. She shook her head as her chuckles subsided and gave Emmet a pointed look when he turned at the sound.

He glared at her and returned to digging.

“He’d _never_ turn to you. He became positively irate at the mere suggestion from me yesterday. I don’t think our dear Saviour likes you very much.” Regina gave a little pout to attempt sorrow at the notion.

“Oh no, he’s certainly all yours.” Rumple snickered suddenly and Regina frowned a little when he devolved into a throaty chuckle of genuine amusement.

“Know something I don’t?”

“Many things, dearie.” Rumple continued to chuckle. “Though this I’ll tell you for free. The Master-Apprentice relationship is not at all as impersonal as you seem to think it is. You’ve forged a connection with this young man. A lifelong one.”

“Hardly.” Regina scoffed.

“It’s true.”

“Not even remotely.” Regina rolled her eyes and they widened on a gasp when Rumple’s hand closed tightly around her throat.

“Very much so. Observe.” Rumple held up his other hand even as Regina’s fingers clasped at his wrist to try and pry his grip away. He wasn’t throttling her but it wasn’t comfortable either. Rumple waved three fingers in her face and began to fold them down. “Three, two, one…”

Rumple was not at all surprised when a huge hand manacled around his wrist and crushed the delicate bones together in a vicelike grip.

He was surprised when he turned to see Emmet and saw blue shot gold magic spitting from his eyes in sparks and streams.

“You don’t get to hurt her anymore.” Emmet snarled and Rumple was airborne.

With a roar, Emmet hauled Rumple’s grip from around Regina’s neck and whirled him up into the air. He swung Rumple over his head like a sledgehammer and punched him into the hole in the beach that had been waist deep on Emmet. Magic sparked around Rumple’s body, blue and gold and _angry_ and Rumple burst through the roof of the vault tunnel a foot beneath the hole Emmet had already dug.

Emmet staggered back a step in surprise at the explosion of bricks and mortar. Sand blasted up and out with the concussive force of an immortal body being punched through the subterranean architecture and there was a booming sound of a sealed room suddenly being burst open to the world outside.

Emmet blinked at the gaping hole that now yawned wide before him. It had been a couple of feet across, nothing but scraped sand excavated by hand alone. Now it was nearly six feet across, sand blasted back in every direction and the hole itself ended in a deep dark pit that Emmet couldn’t see the bottom of.

Emmet looked down at his hands and yelped when he saw the magic still racing over the surface of his skin in arcs and waves. He scrubbed his hands against his now grubby tee shirt and made a sound of distress when it wouldn’t get rid of the magic.

“What did you _do?_ ” Regina drew level with him at the side of the hole and her fingertips brushed his elbow to get him to turn towards her.

“Don’t touch me!” Emmet staggered back from her, yanking his hands away from her.

“Emmet…”

“Stay away!” Emmet nearly tripped over his own feet reversing from her he was moving so fast.

“Emmet, it’s nothing to worry about, will you…”

“NO!” Emmet scrubbed his hands over his legs and made a small and frightened sound when he couldn’t get the magic to stop snapping and crackling. He couldn’t make it stop. Why wouldn’t it stop?

“Emmet. Calm _down_.” Regina approached him with her hands out and he broke.

“No! I won’t hurt you.”

Emmet took to his heels and ran.

Regina planted her hands on her hips and heaved out a sigh. She rolled her eyes skyward, considering her options and then groaned when she realised what she was going to have to do.

Ambling over to the edge of the hole now leading down to what had to be a mostly empty room in the outer reaches of her vault, Regina bent at the waist and called out into the dark.

“Still in one piece?”

Regina watched a gull wheel overhead and waited for a response.

“You know,” Rumple’s pained voice floated up from within the dark, “he’s not _nearly_ as charming as he thinks he is.”

Regina caught her hands on her knees and called out to him again.

“So I don’t need to call an ambulance?”

She straightened up quickly when a plume of black smoke announced Rumple’s presence at her side. He smirked at her and her hand itched to slap it from his face.

“Perfectly alright. My point has rather aptly been illustrated though, don’t you think?”

“You broke him.” Regina complained, waving at the footprints left in the sand, the only indication of where Emmet had disappeared off to. “He’s no use to anybody now. The Charmings are going to _whine._ ”

“Au contraire, this was necessary.” Rumple smiled.

“I’m going to feed you your own cane.” Regina grumbled.

“Now, now, don’t be like that.” Rumple scooped up his cane before she could get any ideas about serving suggestions. “The boy was unstable and overdue a…freakout. Now he’s had it, you can move on.”

“He’s not _had it_ he’s _having it_ and _I_ didn’t want to have to be the one to deal with it! You never did!”

“I did too.” Rumple looked offended. “Every single time you had a crises of faith, I was there to set you back on your path. It’s not all ripping hearts and reaping benefits you know. Apprenticeships _mean_ something.”

“And what is this supposed to mean?!” Regina waved emphatically at the decided _lack_ of apprentice in her general vicinity.

“It means you have to gain his trust. You trusted me after all.”

“A _horrible_ decision, really.”

“Yes, well, that depends on your point of view.” Rumple folded his hands on top of his cane and smirked winsomely at her again. “Now, would you like to gain further from my past experiences in dealing with difficult and high maintenance apprentice…or would you like to complain some more?”

Regina glared at him for a long moment and her jaw rocked to the side.

“You can’t do both.” Rumple assured her sweetly.

Regina narrowed her eyes.

“Well, you probably can but I won’t tolerate both.”

Regina looked out over the ocean and her fingers flexed against the cinch of her waist. She mulled over her options and considered hurling Rumple back into the hole because so long as he was being generous with bodily harm she didn’t see why she shouldn’t benefit.

“You know what’s going on, don’t you?”

“I suspect.”

“You’re not going to tell me.”

“What would be the fun in that?” Rumple grinned.

It turned into a satisfying yelp when Regina shoved him down the hole again.

Regina smirked to herself as she looked up at the sky and his voice floated up out of the dark again.

“Well, I’m definitely not telling you _now_.”

“You can help or you can get out of the way, dear. Pick one.”

“I’m out of the way.” Rumple laid a hand on his chest with sincerity (false, obviously) when he reappeared at Regina’s side. “Totally out of the way. Not even going to _attempt_ to get involved in this particular farce.”

Regina arched a brow at him.

“Though I do know how you can gain his trust.”

“And why on _earth_ should I trust you?” Regina demanded coolly.

“Because you always have.” Rumple smirked at her and Regina rolled her eyes away from him. He wheedled.

“Go on, listen to my suggestion. If you don’t think it will help then no harm and no foul. Also, it will kill time until he tires himself out from running. You do know where he’s going, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Regina shot him a sideways glare.

“Wonderful, we can do tea until he’s all tuckered out.”

“Tea?” Regina huffed out a sigh through her nose.

“I’ll even spring for biscuits.” Rumple hunched his shoulders with a gleeful grin and tugged on her arm, looking down at her when she dug her heels in.

“Why?”

Rumple considered lying. He had a couple of hundred on hand that would have done but the trick with Regina had always been in just enough truth and not too much honesty. He pursed his lips and shrugged a shoulder.

“Because this is hysterical.”

Regina rocked her head back and let loose a cavernous sigh.

Well, it wasn’t like she could argue with that.

“Come along.” Rumple tugged her closer and disappeared them both in a plume of smoke.

They did have time to kill, after all.

 

**_The Town Boundary, Over an Hour Later…_ **

 

Emmet was breathing hard by the time he managed it to the top of the hill leading out of town.

Even as big and as strong as he was now, running the length of the town and through the woods to get here had been taxing. He was soaked from the rain and sweat, his hair clung damply to his cheeks where it fell in dripping curls against his skin and his clothes chafed uncomfortably.

He didn’t care about that.

He cared about getting over that orange line, right there, and ridding himself of this stupid curse.

That would work, right?

No magic existed outside of Storybrooke. Therefore, no curses. No curses meant the magic would be killed off and he’d turn back into a she. Job done. No need to suffer through being Regina’s apprentice, no need to dig holes in some barren beach in the middle of nowhere, no need to listen to Rumple’s heckling or people’s sniggers or put up with that wet stare that Snow gave him every time he walked back into the loft and he wasn’t the daughter she wanted.

He’d cross the town line and he’d be rid of it. Finally. He’d be rid of it.

“Only for as long as you remain on the other side of the town line.”

“JESUS!” Emmet staggered back when Regina _appeared_ in front of him.

One second he had been alone on the rainy road and the next she was practically under his nose and looking up at him from under a black umbrella.

Regina continued in a low drawl as if he hadn’t reacted at all even though she had staggered him so badly that he had tripped over his own canoe sized shoes and landed on his ass in the middle of the road.

“Of course, it’s no skin off _my_ nose if you disappear off into the sunset hopefully never to be seen again…but Henry would be crushed.” Regina arched a brow down at him and lazily studied him from head to foot as he pushed himself angrily upright again.

“What the hell are you doing here?!” He seethed. “I’m dangerous. I could hurt you.”

“You’re an idiot and you’ve already hurt me far beyond anything else even your _mother_ could muster.” Regina spoke in that same bored supremely unimpressed tone. “You stole my son from me. The one light in my life and you just _took him_. For no other reason than you wanted to. For no other reason than you could. You are a cruel, _vain_ , boy and I find myself questioning my decision to let you live every. Waking. Morning…but the fact remains that Henry loves you and for as long as that is the case then you have _me_ to deal with.”

“I’m not a boy!” Emmet shoved to his feet. “I’m supposed to be female! I was born Emma Swan! I was supposed to be normal! I’m sup- -!”

“Henry doesn’t even like 'normal' never mind love it.”

Emmet gasped to a fumbling halt at that. Like she’d punched him in the gut.

Regina’s eyes glittered as she took in his pain. She cocked her head as if remembering the weak spot for future reference.

Emmet stared at her, his chest heaving and the only sound was the drumming of the rain on her umbrella and the huffs of breath bellowing in and out of him.

“I cross that line,” Emmet jabbed a finger at the orange line, “and the magic goes away. I’ll be me again.”

“Wrong.” Regina rolled her eyes.

“No! It will work!”

“Wrong again.”

“If there’s no magic to power this curse or spell or wish or WHATEVER then it will go away!”

“Do you ever get tired of being wrong?” Regina raised her eyebrows at him. “Does it strain you at all? To be so incredibly wrong so incredibly often?”

“WHY NOT?!” Emmet roared at her and then clapped his hands over his mouth when blue sparks spat from behind his teeth.

“Temper. _Temper_.” Regina mocked him coolly, flicking a spark from her shoulder with an alarming disdain for the tendril of steam curling from it. “That’s what got you into this in the first place, after all.”

“What?”

“Oh, ye gods.” Regina glared up at the underside of her umbrella like there might be some deities in there that owed her big time for this. “Not the curse or spell or whatever but your little problem with what essentially amounts to an ill timed magical erection.”

“What?” Emmet clapped his mouth shut on the next yelled expletive he had been building up to.

“I _told you_.” Regina spoke with a deliberate patience. The measured tone of someone who had a limited resource and was rationing it accordingly. “Your body is doing a hormonal Macarena. Your magic is manifesting for the first time. When the body learns to do something new; it tests it. Repeatedly. Often without conscious consent.”

“I put Gold through a wall.” Emmet growled.

“I put my mother through an interdimensional portal.” Regina raised her eyebrows and smiled though for the first time it didn’t seem to be entirely unkind. “If we’re going to try and tally up depravities, I really think I’m going to win.”

“I could hurt Henry!”

“And leaving forever won’t hurt him?” Regina asked quietly.

“It…it wouldn’t be forever.” Emmet frowned. “Just until I get control.”

“And how –pray tell- are you to learn said control when you’re _out there_ and I’m _in here_?”

“You can cross the town border.”

“No.”

“You can!”

“Doesn’t mean I will.” Regina smirked. “Our deal was made in Storybrooke. It is binding in Storybrooke and if you think I’m leaving Henry to your parents' tender mercies than you’re even dumber than I thought which means that I’m impressed your still sucking in oxygen, you entry level life form.”

“Well…”

“No.” Regina dropped the hand that wasn’t holding the umbrella into her pocket. “I thought you were done running.”

“I’m not running away. I’m dealing with this the only way I can.” Emmet snapped at her.

“By running away? What a coincidence. Colour me shocked. I’m all aghast. However will I get over this incredible twist of motive?” Regina pressed the back of her hand to her forehead and looked falsely forlorn. “Oh, woe is me. How could I not have seen this comi- -oh, wait. I did.”

Regina dropped her hand and glared at him.

“Think, idiot. How did I find you?”

“You tracked me. With…”

“And waste the energy that could otherwise be spent bleaching my brain of all memory of our acquaintance? Try again.” Regina snorted. “I knew you’d be here. I knew you would run. First chance you got. First time it got hard. First time something didn’t go your way; you _run._ Like a rabbit before a hound. I can’t say I’m surprised and if I was capable of holding you in any kind of estimations I am certain I would be disappointed but I’m not because I don’t.”

Emmet hissed out a breath between his teeth and looked sharply away from her.

“And that’s what you get if you come back.”

Emmet frowned, looking sharply over at her.

“I don’t care for you. At all.” Regina stepped closer to him. “You could die tomorrow and my only concern would be that Henry knew either I wasn’t at fault or had no way of finding out if I was.”

Emmet focussed entirely on Regina then when he caught the shade of a lie.

“So, this is my gift to you, Mister Swan; no expectations. I will be the one person in this town who will _never_ be disappointed in you because I am entirely incapable of having expectations of you. I will never ask you for anything because I do not trust you to deliver. I will never hold you to anything because I think you a coward and a wretch who will,” Regina waved languidly to the town line, her fingers dripping with rain, “run at the very first chance he gets.”

“Well, this is a good self image day for me.” Emmet gritted.

“Save me the pity party. You came out her with nothing more than the clothes on your back. You don’t even have your wallet, you _child_. You deserve nothing more than my disdain. So it is what you shall have. And it is a gift because it is _free_.” Regina bit back at him.

“I’m dangerous.”

“You’re _sparkly_.” Regina’s mouth twisted with disgust. “Stay away from brainless teenage girls who are setting themselves up for disappointment and you’ll be fine.”

Emmet’s jaw clenched so hard it clicked.

“And what if I say no?”

“What you gonna do? Glitter at me?” Regina huffed a derisive chuckle.

“You’re a lot smaller than Gold.”

“Do you really think you got the drop on the Dark One?” Regina raised a mocking eyebrow and Emmet’s jaw slowly unclenched.

“He’s not…hurt?”

“Of course he’s not hurt, you useless paperclip.” Regina’s arm waved wide with her irritation. “Dark One! _My_ teacher! Eater of faeries, author of curses, possessor of shadows and all round pain in my ass _of course_ you didn’t hurt him.”

Emmet huffed out a slow breath.

“Though it did take you far too long to even ask after him if we’re going to be holding you to regular ‘Good Guy’ standards. Hell, it took you too long if we’re going by the baseline of Decent Human Being.”

“I get it, you hate me!” Emmet snarled.

“I’d have to care about you to hate you, you artless baggage.” Regina cut in smoothly.

“That doesn’t change the fact that I have no control over my magic!” Emmet pressed on relentlessly. Why didn’t she _get it_?

“It saddens me that I don’t know enough Dumb Blonde Jokes to properly map the level of your ineptitude that borders on the imbecilic.” Regina huffed out a genuinely sad sounding sigh.

“Are you charging by the insult?”

“No. My opinion is free it is my knowledge which comes at a premium. Luckily for you, you’re getting family rates.” Regina dug into her coat pocket once more.

“I don’t want to hurt Henry.”

“With your magic boner?” Regina looked bored.

“STOP CALLING IT THAT!” Emmet threw up his hands and yelped when more sparkles trailed from him.

Regina made a point of angling the umbrella so she was shielded from them as well as the rain. The umbrella didn’t quite manage to hide her smirk.

“Fuck you.” Emmet’s temper snapped wild in his eyes. “Fuck you and the heels you rocked up in.” He sidestepped her, heading for the townline and jerked to a halt when something cold clanked around his wrist.

Staring down, Emmet’s eyes went wide when he saw she…she had _handcuffed him_!

A single silver cuff circled his large wrist and the chain led to its mate which manacled around Regina’s own slim wrist. The cuffs were different sizes despite being on the same set so she must have created them for this specific purpose.

“What. Do you think you’re doing?”

“A grand gesture. In my experience, you rarely listen to reason but –hey- do something stupid and likely to end in pain on my part and suddenly you’re all ears, you sadistic hipster.” Regina jangled the cuff. “So, these are…pressure valves. Any excess magic you produce will be fed along this connection and into me where I will be able to deal with it.”

“What’s the danger part?” Emmet frowned down at her.

“Well, if you act according to your baser urges and step over the town line anyway…all the magic will be ripped out of me in an effort to replace your own across the town line.”

Emmet stared at her.

“Yes. That would be very painful and possibly life threatening to me. Thanks for asking.” She gave a short tug and started back along the road towards town. “Come on.”

“No.”

Regina grunted when she was so rudely jerked to a halt when all burgeoning six foot three of trainee sorcerer dug his heels in.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Good for you. Your super power has never counted with me anyway. Feel free to start walking at any time.” Regina yanked again and growled when he still refused to move. She huffed a sigh. “Rumple can remove these. I can’t whilst our magics are connected. So we’re going to have to go back into town to get them off. By the time we’ve walked there, you’ll be colder, wetter, hungrier and will have calmed down enough to _see reason_ and realise that I’m your best chance at getting out of this intact.”

“How can- -?!”

“Because I _know you_!” Regina rounded on him with a hiss. “Believe me, I wish I didn’t, but I do. I knew you’d attack Rumple if he moved to harm me which is why I didn’t chase him off when he first appeared because you’re an idiot. I knew you’d run after you did because you’re a coward. I knew the first thing you’d do with your problem was try to make it disappear because you are lazy and I knew THIS would stop you from crossing the town border because you are spineless. I. Know. You.”

Regina had been the one to spit that whole diatribe at him but it was Emmet that was breathing hard by the end of it.

Regina lifted their linked wrists and inspected the blue sparks tangling about her fingers. She looked them right in the eye and with a clenched fist, snuffed them out.

“Now.” Regina raked him with a glance. “Are you going to man up, or am I going to have to knock you out and tell my son the truth about why his father needs to be picked up and carried home like some child because he didn’t _want_ to do the right thing?”

“I think I’m allowed to freak out about this.” Emmet spoke with as much measure as he could but his voice shook. She had cut deep into every single weak spot and he hadn’t said a word to defend himself.

How could he when she was right?

“You are.” Regina hunched a shoulder. “Just not on my time. If you want therapy, find another invertebrate to help you.”

Regina yanked cruelly on the manacles and dragged him a step down the road towards the town. Magic spat and sparked from her fingers and she drained it ruthlessly of its life before blackened cinders trailed from her fingertips to the road.

She did not share the umbrella with him on the way back.  


End file.
